Joint National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS).

This Liberia’s NAPHS is a nationwide sectoral document aiming at (i) preventing, detecting and responding to public health threats; (ii) preventing international spread of epidemic prone diseases; (iii) promoting multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary coordination and collaboration in the context of One Health approach to respond to the urgency to establish adequate capacities for preparedness, detection and response to public threats and events in line with the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) requirements. The Action Plan requires a collaboration between human and animal health and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) since most epidemics arise from the interface between human and animal health and the environment. The overall goal of the document is to reduce morbidity, mortality, disability and socio-economic disruptions due to public health threats and contributes to attainment of the SDG 3 targets. The Plan takes into account a set of guiding principles and core values such as country ownership and leadership; community participation; gender and human rights principles, accountability, equity in access to services; active partnerships; fostering inter-sectoral and multi-sectoral collaboration; evidence-led planning; transparency and resilience.
The specific objectives are to (i) ensure access to safe and quality health services through improved capacity of the one health network to detect, prevent and promptly respond to public health threats and events; (ii) ensure a robust health emergency risk management system aligned with One Health approach; (iii) facilitate an enabling environment and restoring trust in the whole-of-society approach to provide services including community engagement, improving leadership, governance and accountable management systems; (iv) strengthen and sustain the national capacity to prevent outbreaks and other health emergencies; (v) strengthen and sustain the national capacity to promptly detect and confirm outbreaks; (vi) strengthen and sustain the national capacity to promptly respond to and recover from the negative effects of outbreaks and health emergencies; (vii) strengthen and retain One Health workforce; (viii) map existing and potential domestic and external financing to support the delivery of the national action plan; (ix) strengthen institutional framework to support Health Security and one health implementation.
Considering the One Health approach, the main interventions shall be conducted in all the involved sectors, namely (1) human health; (2) animal health; (3) food safety; (4) environment. In the animal health sector, the document encourages to intervene in the following (i) the AMR detection and reporting; (ii) epi-surveillance system for priority zoonotic diseases (domestic/wildlife); (iii) capacity building for animal health workforce to ably detect, manage and respond to zoonotic diseases/ outbreaks, and for research; (iv) veterinary higher education. As for food safety, the Action Plan calls for (i) establishing a system for surveillance of food borne pathogens; (ii) strengthening and establishing new food testing laboratories; (iii) adopting Codex Standards; (iv) finalizing a national Food Law.
In the context of One Health, the Government of Liberia will play an overall stewardship and coordination role, and this will be technically led by the Ministry of Health with support from the NPHIL.