Countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion aim for Sustainable Development Goals for health. Through the Working Group on Health Cooperation, GMS countries are taking comprehensive, coordinated and proactive approaches to address regional health issues.
The Greater Mekong Subregion still experiences high incidence of communicable diseases and drug-resistant microorganisms. GMS countries also suffer from inefficient health systems due to lack of synergies, economies of scale, and scope; and there are few common solutions to common health problems.
The health agenda of the GMS Economic Cooperation Program Strategic Framework 2030 (GMS-2030) will focus on communicable disease control through cross-border surveillance and modeling, information exchange, implementation of international health regulations, and pandemic preparedness. Since universal health coverage is a critical regional public good, GMS-2030 will aim to accelerate its implementation. This will be effected by strengthening the performance of GMS health systems to prevent, detect, and respond to public health threats such as COVID-19 and other emerging diseases; supporting countries to comply with the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations; applying a unified approach to environmental, animal, and human health (“One Health”); strengthening protection of vulnerable communities and migrants; building capacity and cross-border cooperation to address priority health issues; and advancing gender equality to build subregional health cooperation leadership and decision-making policy. GMS-2030 aims to provide a new setting for the development of this subregion for the next decade.
Regional health cooperation initiatives in the GMS, based on the 5-year strategy that identifies operational priorities for health cooperation for 2019-2023, focus on three strategic pillars:
Strategic Pillar 1: Health security as a regional public good tackles the subregion’s vulnerability to acute public health events. Ensuring robust national health systems with capacity to prevent, detect and respond to transnational health threats is the cornerstone of health security.
Strategic Pillar 2: Health impacts of connectivity and mobility respond to health challenges stemming from an increasingly interconnected GMS. Strengthening health systems in border areas where migrant and mobile populations pass and reside is an entry point for programming. Also includes. integrating health impact assessment during project planning and implementation of GMS urban and transport infrastructure projects.
Strategic Pillar 3: Health workforce development builds on the subregion’s existing human resource capacity to address common health challenges. Strong leadership in turn opens opportunities for intraregional capacity building, utilizing the subregions’ depth of health human resource and health programming experience to tackle shared health issues and enhance country efforts to attain Sustainable Development Goal targets.
The Working Group on Health Cooperation seeks to address collective action problems of regional health investments and limited resources for health that tend to prioritize national investments.
Related
Send inquiries to GMS Secretariat.
After more than 20 years, the Working Group on Human Resource Development was restructured in 2017 to focus on health, given the strategic importance of regional cooperation in this area.
Labor migrants in the Greater Mekong Subregion play a vital role in economic development. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have organized joint virtual dialogues on labor mobility.
Consequent to the review of the GMS Institutional Framework in 2016 and a separate review of the Strategic Framework and Action Plan for Human Resource Development in the GMS 2013–2017, GMS ministers endorsed the creation of the Working Group on Health Cooperation in 2017.
Human resource development, however, continues to be an important sector in the Greater Mekong Subregion. At an extraordinary meeting of the Working Group on Human Resource Development in Bangkok on 4 July 2017, participants agreed on the following key points:
Related
LaoSafe, a health and hygiene program for the tourism and hospitality sector, was rolled out in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic by the country’s Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, to welcome tourists back safely into the country.
Mr. Pairoj Chotikasathien, head of the Thai Labour Ministry’s employment department, shared that the Thai Cabinet has approved improved labor management measures to address the gap in migrant worker employment. These measures include (i) allowing documented workers to stay until February 2025; and (ii) allowing undocumented workers to register and work until the same date.
Health ministers of Southeast Asia have agreed to work toward mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccination certificates to facilitate travel across the region as countries reopen their borders. This will involve putting in place an ASEAN universal verification mechanism that uses digital technology while ensuring data privacy protection and security.
In the Greater Mekong Subregion, environmental assessment for livestock value chains projects helps avoid, minimize, and mitigate environmental, health, and safety risks.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $95 million loan to help the Cambodian government vaccinate Cambodians against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from 2022 to 2023, including annual booster shots for those already vaccinated and primary doses for children under 5.
ADB’s $1.5 billion CARES Program for Thailand provides budget support for the government’s COVID-19 response.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Thailand held the first Policy Platform meeting as part of the Thailand: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support (CARES) program on 9 August. The meeting was led by Mr. Arkhom Termpittayapaisith, Finance Minister of the Government of Thailand and Asian Development Bank (ADB) Governor, and Mr. Ahmed M. Saeed, Vice-President (Operations 2), ADB.
The 11th Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting was held on 21 July 2021, co-chaired by Mr. Prak Sokhonn, Cambodia Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India Minister of External Affairs. The meeting noted the progress in the MGC Plan of Action 2019-2022 implementation.
The second Mekong-U.S. Partnership Ministerial Meeting held on 2 August 2021 unveiled four flagship projects under the Mekong-U.S. Partnership, and noted the 8.5 million vaccine doses and over $58 million in U.S. COVID-19 assistance to the Mekong subregion countries.
Capacity development in the area of human resource management is greatly needed in the Lao PDR’s health sector. At the Ministry of Health, strengthening the staff’s capacity for reliable planning of prevention, treatment, and managing statistical systems has contributed positively to the well-being of employees—as well as health system beneficiaries, who received better services.
