Harare, 30 September 2009 — A landmark plan to improve how countries, particularly developing nations, can better protect themselves against the pandemic H1N1 2009 has been applied for the first time in the world during a two-day workshop in Zimbabwe that ended today.

The plan, known as the “Call to Action,” describes what measures that countries, including those affected by humanitarian crises, can take to reduce the threat posed by the pandemic. More than 50 participants took part in the Harare event, including senior Zimbabwean Ministry of Health and Child Welfare officials and experts from key UN, international and local organisations, the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and governments missions.

The “Call to Action” was first launched in August and was initiated by the World Health Organization, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the UN Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and UNICEF. It advocates a set of key public health measures to support governments and communities to reduce the impact of the pandemic.

Zimbabwe was chosen as the first country to apply the Call to Action because of the experiences faced, and lessons learned, from its 2008-09 cholera outbreak that infected almost 100 000 people and killed 4000. In response to the cholera epidemic, Zimbabwean authorities and WHO,

Zimbabwe has drawn up its own proposed H1N1 pandemic preparedness and response plan and has committed, in a “Harare Declaration on Preparedness and Response to the Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic” issued at the end of today’s meeting, to apply the “Call to Action” measures to its own national pandemic plan.

“Zimbabwe is the first country in the world to apply the Call to Action principles to its own health system,” said Dr Custodia Mandlhate, WHO’s Representative to Zimbabwe. “The country has learned a lot from the cholera outbreak. It has developed systems that will prevent a cholera outbreak of such a scale ever happening again. And the same system will be instrumental in protecting the public from the impact of this new H1N1 pandemic.

The Harare event being hosted by the WHO country office attracted health experts from the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, WHO’s Geneva headquarters and African regional hub in Brazzaville, the IFRC, OCHA, UNICEF and nongovernmental organizations.

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