Essential health services and systems maintained and strengthened in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings

The Secretariat will step up its leadership by: working with partners to mitigate the impact of protracted emergencies and prolonged disruption of health systems in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings by improving access to quality and sustainable health services based on expanding primary health care services. It will commit to accelerating work towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is committed to leaving no one behind; contributing to the development of humanitarian response plans for countries in protracted humanitarian emergencies and strengthening the delivery of life-saving and life-sustaining emergency operations, while continuing to provide gender-responsive and disability-inclusive programming and promoting the Health for Peace approach through continued coordination with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee; and strengthening governance and coordination mechanisms for maintaining the continuity of essential health services during the response to emergencies, while leveraging polio infrastructure and assets, particularly at subnational level, as part of the polio transition. The Secretariat will support countries to: strengthen national resilience to health risks and prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from shocks, working within a ?do no harm? approach, while reducing fragmentation and building on existing systems in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings; strengthen governance and coordination mechanisms in order to maintain the continuity of essential health services during the response to emergencies, while also supporting countries to strengthen the foundational capacities of their national systems and resources (such as their infrastructure, health workforce, medical supply chain management, health information systems, planning and financing); establish appropriate emergency response coordination mechanisms, as lead United Nations agency for the Global Health Cluster and in coordination with other clusters, and ensure appropriate coordination solutions in different emergency contexts that foster strategic, technical and operational connections with other emergency management and health development partner coordination platforms; develop and implement internal monitoring and evaluation tools for assessing progress, performance and impact, in accordance with existing national health information management systems and monitoring related to the Sustainable Development Goals; ensure that they have a clear and comprehensive system for monitoring routine essential health services in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings and the progressive expansion of the access, use and quality of an essential package of health services, allowing for course corrections and improvements when needed. Vulnerable populations must have access to costed essential packages of health services contextualized to their situation and health requirements, with special focus on immunization; sexual, reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health; mental health and psychosocial support; and noncommunicable diseases; and maintain and strengthen their essential health services in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings by providing them with integrated and context-specific programming. WHO will work with partners to conduct joint assessments and joint planning, identify collective outcomes and foster integrated programming and multiyear financing, based on conflict analyses, so that programming is conflict-sensitive and contributes to social cohesion, community trust and dialogue.