In the Asia-Pacific region, which comprises WHO’s South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, health security is continually threatened by outbreaks and public health emergencies caused by emerging infectious diseases, the impacts of natural hazards and unsafe food and water.

While Australia does not share any land borders, rapid air travel and trade mean that outbreaks of new and re-emerging diseases in one country can become global concerns in a matter of hours. A key player in regional and global health security, Australia has provided valuable support for WHO’s work on health security and emergency preparedness and response, including the contributions to the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, the Contingency Fund for Emergencies, and additional technical assistance for WHO regional and selected country offices.

The Australian Government has committed A$ 300 million to the Indo-Pacific Health Security Initiative, announced in October 2017. The Initiative contributes to the prevention of, preparedness for and response to infectious disease threats with the potential to cause social and economic harms on a national, regional or global scale.

After being declared polio-free in 2000, Papua New Guinea suffered from an outbreak of a vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 in June 2018. After notifying WHO, as required under the International Health Regulations, a national emergency was declared by the Government and the National Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Response was activated.

The effective coordination of key partners including the Australian Department of Health, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, WHO and others helped ensure an agile response and fast mobilization of resources to ensure children living in some of the hardest to reach parts of the country could be vaccinated.

In addition to providing financial support to the response through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Australia has also played a critical role in testing polio samples. For every case of acute flaccid paralysis, stool specimens have been collected at the provincial level in PNG and shipped to the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL) Surveillance Unit, the WHO-accredited National Reference Laboratory in Port Moresby. The CPHL ensures that the stool samples are properly labelled, packed and shipped to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, a WHO Polio Regional Reference Laboratory located at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne. More than 400 stool specimens have been received at the Doherty Institute from acute flaccid paralysis cases and contacts of cases since the polio outbreak was declared.

Australia has long been a supporter of polio at the country-level and in the international arena, helping advance the polio eradication agenda through the Commonwealth Leaders Forum, the G20 and other high-level fora.

The people of Australia lend their scientific expertise through the 48 WHO collaborating centres that work directly with WHO on a range of technical priorities. Some of Australia’s top institutions are represented, such as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, The George Institute for Global Health, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Prince of Wales Hospital and others.  

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Strengthening Rehabilitation Capacity in Health Systems, hosted by The University of Sydney, is supporting WHO’s work in developing a community-based rehabilitation (CBR) workforce in Pacific Island countries where access to rehabilitation services are scarce. The centre works with partners to promote and enhance CBR across the Pacific by developing educational materials relevant to the local context, conducting trainings and supporting people with disabilities and their families.

Since 1993, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Women’s Health at the University of Melbourne has contributed to research in a range of health areas pertaining to women such as sexual and reproductive health, violence, disability and obstetric care. In 2015, the centre completed a review of implementation of WHO’s guidelines on responding to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women to more thoroughly address challenges specific to women with disabilities, who are 2 to 3 times more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse than women without a disability.  

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Diagnostics and Laboratory Support for HIV/AIDS and Other Blood-borne Infections at the National Serology Reference Laboratory assists WHO in assuring the quality of testing conducted for HIV, viral hepatitis, malaria, Human T-cell lymphotropic virus and other pathogens through capacity building of quality systems for testing of bloodborne pathogens; maintaining clinical specimen repositories and assisting with dossier assessment for WHO prequalification. 

In today’s interconnected world health emergencies can affect anyone, anywhere. WHO’s Contingency Fund for Emergencies (CFE) rapidly makes available small amounts of funding for WHO’s initial response activities, which help prevent avoidable deaths, illness and injury, as well as losses to the economy.

In 2018, the Australian Government announced its contribution of US$ 4 million to the Fund’s life-saving work. Whilst used to support some of WHO’s largest responses, including the 2018 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the CFE has also enabled a rapid and efficient response for outbreaks and emergencies taking place on Australia’s doorstep. Some examples include:

• response to Tropical Cyclone Gita in the Pacific;
• earthquake recovery in Papua New Guinea;
• support for flooding aftermath in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic; and
• containment of the measles outbreak in the Philippines.

The CFE has demonstrated that a small investment can pay life-saving dividends and dramatically reduce the direct costs of controlling outbreaks and responding to emergencies.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has contributed A$ 5 million to WHO from 2018-2022 for work on drinking-water safety and WASH in health care facilities with a focus on 4 countries, Bhutan, Indonesia, Philippines, and Viet Nam, along with global work. This builds on a previous DFAT investment of A$ 15 million to WHO for its work on safe drinking water (2008-2017), which led to support for 15 countries in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regions for the development of water safety. These were implemented across 882 water systems in the 15 countries, supporting more than 35 million people.

In 2016-2017, Australia contributed US$ 340,000 to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) and pledged US$ 359,000 for 2018-2021. These donations support the production of reliable estimates of national, regional and global progress on WASH to inform decision-making by government, donor and civil society organizations. 

With the help of Australian experts and contributions, WHO published the WHO water, sanitation and hygiene strategy 2018-2025, guidelines for developing drinking-water quality regulations with a focus on countries with limited resources and a report on drinking water sanitation and hygiene in schools.