Following the Joint External Evaluation conducted in September 2024, Kenya has validated its second-generation National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS II) ahead of its official launch later this year.
The National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) is a multi-year plan that is critical to ensuring that national capacities for health emergency preparedness, response and recovery are planned, built, strengthened and sustained, to serve vulnerable populations. It promotes health and keeps people safe and secure, contributing to global health security.
The validation workshop brought together 60 participants from government ministries, academia, research institutions and implementing partners, including the Ministry of Health, Kenya National Public Health Institute (KNPHI), Kenya Defence Forces, Ministry of interior, Ministry of Environment, County governments, KEMRI, WHO, Palladium, partners and stakeholders.
The process followed a comprehensive costing exercise completed in August 2025, during which over 50 participants developed a fully costed strategy and operational plan. The plan reflects lessons learned from disease outbreak preparedness and response, and addresses gaps identified in recent evaluations.
« While capacity is being built in emergency preparedness, there are things holding us back such as our inability to access funds immediately, » said Dr Victoria Kanana Kimonye, Emergency Preparedness and Response at KNPHI.
The plan prioritizes strengthening sub-national systems to contain emergencies locally before they escalate and tapping into existing but underutilized resources. « The resources exist, but as a health fraternity we have not learned how to access them through existing processes and guidelines, » said Dr Kimonye.
Integration of Kenya’s multiple digital systems for surveillance, emergency response an d laboratory work is another key focus, alongside strengthening collaborative surveillance across One Health sectors including animal health and environment to improve response efficiency.
WHO has provided technical guidance, templates and tools throughout the costing and validation process. « This ensures the plan is feasible, realistic and implementable, » said Dr Martins Livinus, WHO Kenya’s Team Lead for Emergency Preparedness and Response. « As Secretariat to the International Health Regulations (2005), WHO is here to guide and support Kenya and its partners. »
The Kenya National Public Health Institute will coordinate implementation and use quarterly monitoring to track progress. The national launch is scheduled for later this year.
« This is not only a health sector plan, » Dr Kimonye concluded. « It is a whole of government and whole of society approach to protect Kenyans from the next pandemic. »
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization – Kenya.
