JAKARTA, May 15 : Asean countries have agreed on the establishment of a regional body to detect diseases that have the potential to become the next pandemic, as well as to synchronise regional health protocols to prevent the spread of communicable diseases in the region.

The 15th Asean Health Ministers Meeting has agreed on establishing the Asean Centre of Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases (ACPHEED), which will address three pillars of pandemic management: detection; surveillance; and response and risk management.

“This is an Asean-led cooperation to face the potential for a pandemic outbreak in the future,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a press conference in Bali on Saturday.

Budi said that three Asean countries - namely Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia - had agreed to host the offices of the center based on each of the three pillars to make sure that in the event of a pandemic outbreak the region would be ready to face it.

The minister explained that the body was similar to other public health bodies, such as the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, the ACPHEED would also respond to other kinds of public health emergencies, not just communicable diseases, that could become a pandemic.

“The responses could be in the form of vaccine [procurement], medicines, whether [public] masking [among other health protocols] is needed or not,” Budi said. In addition to the agreement to establish the body, Asean countries also agreed on the need to standardize health protocols in the region.

“We currently have different health protocols. Indonesia for example mandated indoor and outdoor masking while Singapore mandated indoor and public transportation masking but not outdoors. We want to synergise this,” Budi said.

He said that the standardized health protocols would be akin to the public activity restrictions (PPKM) implemented in Indonesia. Budi said that during a pandemic like Covid-19, responses should not be made by individual countries alone as there was a lot of movement across borders in Asean.

“[Each Asean state] has different legal systems and sovereignty, but epidemiologically we are actually in the same region and the same social group,” Budi said.

While welcoming the public health center’s establishment, Griffith University epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said that Asean as a region was rather late with such a plan compared with other regions such as Europe or Africa.

He said that such initiatives had been discussed for at least 20 years, and the body most akin to it was the Asean Task Force on AIDS that helped the Asean countries to synergize their responses to HIV/AIDS.

“Neighboring countries or within a region have the same level of vulnerability [during a pandemic]. So the existence of a body to strengthen responses against diseases is very important and vital,” Dicky told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He also warned that health capacities across Asean were very different from one another.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, different levels of response were implemented in the region with the initial travel bubble policies implemented by individual Asean member states created with outside countries - such as with South Korea or Japan - instead of with their physically closest neighbors.

Dicky also warned that Asean was a hotspot for emerging as well as reemerging diseases given its tropical climate combined with large population and heavy movement of people.

“We need to help each other, as the principle of global health security is no country is safe until other countries are safe as well, regionally as well as globally,” Dicky said.

Despite the plan to establish the ACPHEED, Asean has yet to come up with regional funding for use in public health emergencies.

Earlier in January, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told the World Economic Forum of the need for a solution for global health emergencies by establishing a global health fund modeled after the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Jokowi again stressed the importance of a global fund to address global health emergencies during a meeting with United States Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC, last week, saying that Asean had planned for a financial institution for public health emergencies.

“With the Asean Covid-19 Response Fund, Asean can fund Covid-19 responses in the region with the help of our partner countries,” Jokowi said on Friday.

Minister Budi said that the discussions on funding were still ongoing within Asean.

He said that President Jokowi pushed for the global health fund in the context of Indonesia’s Group of 20 (G20) presidency, adding that among the G20 members there had been discussions about the establishment of such a body with several countries committing “billions of dollars” expected to be unveiled in June during the G20 leaders meeting.

“We had some progress in the G20, but for Asean, we are still finishing up the ACPHEED first, then we’ll work on the [Asean Covid-19 Response] Fund,” Budi said, adding that the existence of such a body at the global level would make it easier for a regional one to be established.

 - ANN