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Abstract Objectives Disruptive public health risks and events, including infectious disease outbreaks, are inevitable, but their effects can be mitigated by investing in prevention and preparedness. We assessed the epidemic preparedness and response capacity of health systems in 186 countries from 2018 to 2022. Methods We utilized data from the International Health Regulations (IHR) State Party Self-Assessment Annual Reporting (SPAR) submissions to assess health systems’ IHR capacity to (1) prevent, (2) detect, (3) respond, (4) enabling function, and (5) operational readiness from 2018 to 2022. We categorized the IHR capacities into five levels, with level 1 denoting the lowest level of national capacity and level 5 denoting the highest. Results SPAR reporting marginally improved from 92.9% (182 of 196 state parties) in 2018 to 94.9% (186 of 196 state parties) in 2022, with considerable improvement in all five capacity domains over this period, especially in terms of the capacity to prevent and detect epidemic risks. Among the most recent (2022) submissions, 116 (63%) countries demonstrated functional prevention capacity (level 4 or 5), 162 (87%) had functional detection capacity, 118 (64%) had high response capacity, 121 (65%) had functional levels of resources and coordination, and 133 (71%) had the highest operational readiness against public health risks/events. Across all the indexes, the WHO African Region reported the fewest countries with functional capacity in these domains. Conclusions The world remains vulnerable to the persisting risk of epidemics and infectious biohazards, with wide variations among countries in their capacity to prevent, detect, and effectively respond to outbreaks. Strengthening IHR competencies through local, national, and global engagements must be urgently prioritized and funded to achieve global health security against infectious diseases.
Eze et al. (Thu,) studied this question.