Appel à collaboration- Call for Cooperation- Llamada a la colaboración

Early Warning Catholic Care (EWCC)
Network “Global Health, Security, Resilience"
IFCU – WHO -UNESCO

CONTEXT
In November 2019, IFCU organized its New Frontier Forum in Rome dedicated to the theme of “Health issues and Catholic universities”. Many Catholic universities, IFCU members, then mobilized, wishing, at the end of this Forum, to create an international and multidisciplinary network specialized in global health. WHO, who was present at this Forum and is partner of some of our universities, expressed its wish to establish a global institutional partnership with the Federation, in particular within the framework of its work with its dedicated network “Healthcare Information For All” (HIPHA). On the other hand, UNESCO has just launched its own network, COVID-19 Education Coalition and asked for IFCU participation.

Health issues and the global prevention of health risks require networking among multiple and varied actors. In this context, as early as 2014, WHO wished to secure participation from religious actors, community and religious leaders.

The coronavirus crisis makes this initiative more urgent, especially since other crises, perhaps more serious, are sure to occur. It shows the consequences of health commodification, a disturbing dichotomy between the knowledge of health issues specialists and citizens’ behavior ; it finally points out the limits of many countries’ health systems, in particular those of “weak States”. Some interesting initiatives have already emerged in this regard in our network.

In response to the afore-mentioned expectations, IFCU proposes to create a "Global health, health security and resilience" network, which benefits from and is in line with the work undertaken over the past two years, including actions conducted by its international working group on "Health issues” : such a group is one of the concrete examples of the social responsibility of our universities, for which IFCU has set up a specific reference framework (the Newman benchmarking framework).

PRESENTATION
The International Health Regulations (IHR) were revised in 2005 and expanded the concept of notification generally related to infectious diseases to include surveillance for public health events of various origins. The IHR encourages Member States to build the capacity of their surveillance systems to detect, assess, notify and respond to any health emergencies or risks that may pose a threat to human health.

To fully meet the IHR early warning and reporting requirements, it is necessary to strengthen and develop both systematic, or indicator-based, and event-based surveillance. This work must include many actors of multiple horizons.

The World Health Organization also launched an action plan that has undergone review on several occasions in the field of early warning. This plan aims to set up multi-sectorial prevention, including different actors to mobilize in prevention of a health crisis. Catholic universities have numerous health and social work centers, hospitals, medical research centers. In many countries, they are able to collect and disseminate reliable and useful information. They are also institutions that provide reliable information and training on health, independent of lobbies.

OBJECTIVE 1 : Establishment of an early warning system
OBJECTIVE 2 : Dissemination of knowledge and practices on resilience
OBJECTIVE 3 : Action-research on the concept of “global health”

RESULT : Establishment of a global network of Catholic universities on Global health and Early Warning - “Early Warning Catholic Care” (EWCC) - gathered around an Action plan mainly including :

• Work to set up an early warning system based on : the definition of procedures surrounding the collection, notification and analysis of data ; identifying investigation and response mechanisms to be put in place, ensuring the mobilization of human, material and financial resources ; organizing coordination with national and international stakeholders ;
• University action-research work around the concept of global health ;
• The establishment of a database for Catholic universities ;
• The establishment of health training plans and resilience sensibilization for students, administrative staff and professors, and also for stakeholders of the immediate ecosystem.

Fore more information : f.mabille@bureau.fiuc.org