10. WHO applies the following definitions in its emergency work:
- Accountability: WHO’s primary accountability is to the populations it serves. WHO strengthens accountability through evidence-based programming, clarification of roles and responsibilities, transparent information sharing, participation of affected populations, securing feedback and involvement from communities and other stakeholders and maintenance of a risk register. The Director-General is accountable for the timeliness and effectiveness of all WHO emergency responses; on a day-to-day basis, accountability is with the Executive Director of WHE or the Regional Director, depending on the grade.
- Emergency: A situation impacting the lives and well-being of many people or a significant percentage of a population and requiring substantial multisectoral assistance. For a WHO response, there must be clear public health consequences. An emergency can be acute (such as a cholera outbreak) or slow onset (such as a drought), and multiple emergencies can occur concurrently.
- Graded emergency: An acute public health event or emergency that requires an operational response by WHO. There are three WHO grades for emergencies, signifying the level of operational response by the Organization: Grade 1 (limited response), Grade 2 (moderate response), Grade 3 (major/maximal response).
- Operational oversight: Operational oversight is the responsibility of the Regional Emergency Director (RED) for Grade 1, 2 and 3 emergencies, or the Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response at Headquarters for Grade 3 emergencies. This individual is usually responsible for direct supervision of the heads of WHO offices in countries, territories and areas1 for the emergency operations, monitoring the effectiveness of the organizational response to the emergency, and has been delegated authority to make management decisions regarding the response.
- Protracted emergency: An environment in which a significant proportion of the population is highly vulnerable to death, disease and disruption of livelihoods over a prolonged period of time. Governance in these settings is often weak, with limited State capacity to respond to and mitigate the threats to the population or provide adequate levels of protection.
- Public health event: Any event that may have negative consequences for human health. The term includes events that have not yet led to disease in humans but have the potential to cause human disease through exposure to infected or contaminated food, water, animals, manufactured products or environments.
- Strategic response plan: high-level health sector response plan that is required to guide WHO and partners to respond to an event. It outlines the context and provides the latest situation update, a summary of current response activities, response strategic objectives and interventions and response plan (planning assumptions and summary of operations), resource requirements and a monitoring framework. Wherever possible, it should be a sub-element of the national plan, or closely aligned to that plan. WHO should clearly identify within this plan its priorities and resource requirements.
- Zero-tolerance policy: The United Nations policy establishing that sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment by United Nations and WHO personnel is prohibited and that every transgression will be acted upon.
20. Both public health events and emergencies can be sudden onset or slow onset.
[1] Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Public Health Events. Geneva, World Health Organization; 2012 (http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/70810/1/WHO_HSE_GAR_ARO_2012.1_eng.pdf, accessed 27 February 2017).
[2] Adapted from Definition of Complex Emergencies. Geneva: Interagency Standing Committee; 1994 (https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/legacy_files/WG16_4.pdf, accessed 27 February 2017).
