MAURITIUS—The World Health Organization (WHO) Mauritius Country Office has released its new Biennial Workplan 2024-2025 in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW).
This results-focused document, the result of a strong collaboration between WHO Mauritius and the MOHW, specifies the organization’s public health outcomes priorities for the next two years.
This is consistent with the WHO’s 13th General Programme of Work (GPW13), which is split into four pillars: Advancing Universal Health Coverage, Addressing Health Emergencies, Promoting Healthier Populations, and Data and Innovation.
These pillars serve as the foundation for WHO Mauritius’ efforts in support the MOHW’s objective of continuously improving the quality of the country’s health services.
This launch ceremony, held on March 18, 2024, marks the start of the WHO Biennial Workplan and Programme Budget 2024-2025’s operationalization phase.
During a presentation by WHO Mauritius’ Programme Management Officer and technical experts, a full overview of the Workplan, including high-priority outcomes, was provided.
Speaking during the occasion, the Minister of Health and Wellness, Kailash Jagutpal, congratulated WHO Mauritius and his Ministry for the work previously completed, saying that the broad variety of outputs contained in the new Workplan was a promising beginning point for the upcoming biennium.
Dr. Anne Ancia, WHO Representative, explained during her speech that the Workplan specifies WHO’s strategic deliverables for the next two years and assigns resources to fulfill them.
She also voiced optimism, stating that implementing this strategy with WHO Mauritius will further accelerate the country’s great gains in health and health systems, while simultaneously tackling the rising dangers that are jeopardizing some of these successes.
Dr. Ancia also warned that considerable health difficulties lie ahead, citing climate change as a threat to the health system and some of the past decades’ health successes, notably in terms of infectious diseases like dengue.
She emphasized that anti-microbial resistance is fast degrading the treatment options for some major infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV.
Furthermore, the growing migrations of people, commodities, and services and the advent of new epidemic-prone diseases continue to endanger national, regional, and global health security, and changes in living habits, frequently due to socioeconomic upheavals, present novel hazards for human health and welfare.
Key initiatives from the previous Workplan 2022-2023 encompassed several flagship projects, including the development of a National Integrated Action Plan and Service Framework addressing Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs), which constitute 80% of the country’s disease burden and contribute to 85% of deaths..
Furthermore, efforts were made to develop an Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) Strategic and Action Plan, which recognizes the doubling of the population aged 60 and older between 2000 and 2021.
Furthermore, the creation of new legislation relevant to food safety and tobacco control was highlighted, complementing WHO Mauritius’ continued supply of technical assistance and capacity-building initiatives.
The Biennial Workplan and Programme Budget 2024-2025 were created using a seven-step process that began with the identification of health needs and trends based on WHO Mauritius’ Country Cooperation Strategy 2023-2026.
Each intended output is related to a key performance indicator to monitor its impact, indicating the WHO’s commitment to outcomes-oriented management.
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