Public Health Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan 2023

The Public health Directorate ( PHD) is part of Ministry of Health in the Kingdom of Bahrain. It is responsible for all public health related activities including strategic planning, policy formulation, and monitoring and implementation of these activities. It is consists of: Disease Control Section Public health Lab , Food Control Section, Environmental Health Section EHS, School Health Section and Nutrition Section. PHD is the lead administrative and planning agency for public health initiatives, including public health emergency preparedness. PHD works with local, national, regional and international partners to improve the country ability to respond to public health emergencies. The international communication take place also through the National Focal Point of international health regulations.

1. A public health emergency is broadly defined as the occurrence of a sudden event (either natural or manmade) that creates a health risk which may cause serious consequences on the health of the population and the resources. Types of Public Health Emergencies
• Natural disasters
• Biological terrorism
• Chemical terrorism/accidents
• Radiological terrorism/accidents
• Naturally occurring communicable disease outbreaks

1. A health Hazard is defined as any potential threat to public safety and/or public health
2. A health Risk is defined as the probable consequences to public health and safety of a community being exposed to a hazard (i.e. death, injury, disease, disability, damage, destruction, displacement etc.)
3. Vulnerability is defined as any (endogenous) factor which increases risks arising from a specific hazard

The purpose of this plan is to establish methods and procedures to be used by the PHD and other emergency planning agencies to respond to public health emergencies. This plan is intended to be multifunctional in that some events will require the execution of specific sections only, a large-scale public health emergency will require the execution of this entire plan, and it will also be used to simulate exercises and drills.

This plan contains three phases under the operations section: mitigation and preparedness, response, and recovery. PHD recognizes that preparedness is an ongoing effort and describes a desired state of affairs as well as an area for continuous improvement. PHD will move to the response phase once a public health emergency has been identified, and then to the recovery phase after the immediate threat of further illness or injury has subsided.

The level of the response will depend on the level of threat to the public health in specific situation. In general, level of responses – for infectious diseases- will be:

To outline the actions that will be taken in response to a public health threat in order to ensure an efficient and coordinated response.

1. Protect the population against any unusual public health events either intentional or unintentional
2. Reduce community morbidity and mortality
3. Maintain essential public health and community services
4. Minimize societal disruptions by providing/ensuring access to appropriate prevention, care and treatment

If a public health event is identified, the Director of Public Health Directorate will activate the Public Health Directorate Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan with approval from the higher authority and with coordination with National Disaster committee if required this Plan may be activated by events occurring in other country.

As positions, assignments and the environment surrounding a plan change, this plan is updated on regular basis to reflect new information. Updating of this plan will be preceded by an appraisal of its contents and/or an exercise and evaluation of this plan. Execution of this plan in response to an actual event will be considered a test and will require an after action report to be submitted to MOH