21 September 2020, Cairo – The WHO Regional Director discussed collaborative activities with the newly appointed ITU Regional Director for Arab States, Dr Adel Darwish, during a joint WHO-ITU meeting, which was held on Thursday 17 September 2020. The importance of inter-agency work was emphasized, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen innovative digital technologies being used at an unprecedented scale to keep people connected, safe and productive while being physically and socially apart. Joint areas of collaboration discussed included supporting utilization of mobile technology for health promotion and protection (mHealth), developing national digital health strategies (using the ITU/WHO toolkit), building capacity in digital health and holding joint expert consultations and webinars.
Discussions about implementing the Global Action Plan for healthy lives and wellbeing focused on two accelerator themes: research and development, access and innovation as well as data and digital health. Both regional directors promised to foster continued inter-agency work and move forward the common agenda of digital health and innovation focusing especially on work at the country level, within our Region.
Collaboration between between WHO and ITU include:
Global Action Plan on Healthy Lives and Wellbeing (GAP) – a collaboration on 12 health and development partners to support countries in meeting the health-related SDGs launched in September 2019. Together, 12 UN Agencies, including THe World Bank, have prepared the regional joint workplan, 2020–2021 and a regional health alliance, which formally recognizes this collaboration, orginally planned for March 2020 will be launched later this year.
WHO-ITU Collaboration on (1) research & development, innovation and access; and (2) data and digital health, including:
Mapping innovations on improved health care delivery, and key health technologies in the context of COVID-19
Raising awareness on importance of ethics in COVID-19 research
Supporting countries on research prioritization towards achievement of health-related SDG targets
Strengthening CRVS systems in the Region, including birth and death registration
Assisting with generating real-time data and supporting initiatives to improve data quality and disaggregation to improve resource allocation and decision-making
Assisting countries in developing national strategies for digital health and the digital architecture blueprints for health
Promoting joint statement of WHO/ITU/UNICEF on COVID-19
Promoting use of digital health technology and artificial intelligence in linkage of information using digital platforms
Supporting mHealth (utilization of modern/mobile technology in health promotion and protection) projects in countries (since 2016), as per the Be-Healthy-Be-Mobile initiative (now operating in: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan). Such projects include work on diabetes control, tobacco cessation, TB-tobacco control, bronchial asthma control and cervical cancer control and involve the 3 levels of both UN agencies and ensure the complimentary working of health, telecommunications, science and technology public/private sectors in countries, a reflection of the complimentary mandate of both agencies in support of health in the Region.
Capacity-building on developing national eHealth strategies, including 2 joint workshops in Cairo (2017) and Beirut (2018), based upon the joint ITU/WHO National eHealth Strategy Toolkit.
Reciprocal invitations to activities held by either agency, including conferences, meetings and consultations (whether in-person or virtual), such as an expert consultation on digital health and innovation (February 2020) and a regional webinar on digital health and innovation (May 2020).
