Implementation Framework for Cross Border Collaboration for Priority Vaccine Preventable Diseases Surveillance and Immunization

"...multiple sociopolitical, sociocultural and motivational factors determine the effectiveness of cross-border collaborations..."

Border regions, particularly those that are porous, are associated with steady movement of humans (and often animals) across the border. This flow poses significant risk of transmission of communicable diseases. Thus, it is important to have cross-border collaboration within and between countries to share vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) information and to synchronise response activities to VPD outbreaks across borders to accelerate control/elimination/eradication of VPDs. The World Health Organization (WHO) has drawn lessons from various regional and inter-country cross-border collaborations to develop this resource. The document advocates for the establishment of a cross-border collaboration platform to strengthen both information-sharing and coordination capacity to respond to cross-border VPD outbreaks.

The implementation framework envisions that information-sharing happens at a local level across borders among the countries of WHO South-East (SE) Asia Region and WHO Western Pacific Region while maintaining the exchange of information at the national level through the International Health Regulations (IHR). The process is designed to help reduce the bureaucratic process for communication between neighbouring countries and ensure a quick and synchronised response to immunisation and surveillance activities for VPD across borders.

The guiding principles of the implementation framework are as follows:

• Focused on translation of political commitment to control, eliminate, and eradicate VPDs into action on the ground
• Country led and owned, tailored to the local context
• Partnership based - aligning with partners beyond health to maximise impact
• Grounded in evidence-based decision-making processes
• Responsive to the intended population's needs
• Adaptable to changing needs
• Harnessing of innovations and good practices from other related programmes
• Equitable in terms of data sharing: Equitable information-sharing requires the engagement of these potential stakeholders: Information providers are those who generate VPD surveillance information from either the community, the healthcare system, or non-health sources; information recipients are those who interpret and use data generated by others; and information-sharing facilitators are those who make sharing between information providers and recipients possible.

The document provides guidance on best practices for cross-border collaboration, as well as on key activities that Member States can carry out to operationalise cross-border collaboration. If offers sample tools, sample monitoring indicators, key milestones and targets, and descriptions of existing regional collaborative initiatives, inter-country collaborative initiatives, and WHO inter-regional collaborations. Recommendations that are offered are gleaned from the Fifth Biennial Bi-regional Cross-border Meeting on Polio, Measles-Rubella, and other Priority Vaccine Preventable Diseases, held in September 2022, in Kathmandu, Nepal.