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 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.
Regional health cooperation initiatives in the Greater Mekong Subregion 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 responds 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.
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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.
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:
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The Greater Mekong Subregion is developing a health cooperation strategy that will improve health system performance in responding to public health threats, strengthen resilience to impacts of regional integration, and enhance human resource capacity to respond to priority health issues in the subregion.
Countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion are close to full employment. However, workers in vulnerable jobs are alarmingly high
A high-level gathering was organized by ADB on 6 July 2017 at Sofitel Hotel in Bangkok to officially launch the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Health Security Project and endorse the declaration for the GMS health security and future health collaboration among countries in the GMS.
The first meeting of the Greater Mekong Subregion Working Group on Health Cooperation (WGHC-1) was held in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR on 13-14 December 2017.
BEIJING, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (20 September 2017) — The Asian Development Bank’s Board of Directors has approved a results-based loan of $250 million to help establish a demand-driven technical and vocational education and training system in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
This is the summary of proceedings from the first meeting of the Greater Mekong Subregion Working Group on Health Cooperation (WGHC-1) at Luang Prabang, in the Lao People's Democratic Republic on 13-14 December 2017.
Scientists are urgently calling for alternative treatments to a malaria “superbug” that now affects four countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
More than 50 participants from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Planning, and Ministry of Finance of the six GMS countries met on 5 July 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand to discuss the proposed GMS Strategy on Health Cooperation and the proposed GMS Working Group on Health Cooperation.
An extraordinary meeting of the GMS Working Group on Human Resource Development was held in Bangkok, Thailand on 4 July 2017.
Five countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion are receiving additional support to eliminate malaria.
