About the PAGnet Partnership

PAGnet is a network of State Parties, competent authorities, intergovernmental and non governmental organizations, and industry representatives from ports, airports and ground crossings and individual experts who have expressed an interest in working together to share port health information and to promote implementation of public health practices under the International Health Regulations.

History, Rationale and Principles

History and rationale
For the past several years, port health experts and other key players involved in WHO informal technical meetings on point of entry issues have expressed the need for an electronic network for information sharing regarding IHR implementation. A network prototype was introduced and overwhelmingly agreed at the informational technical consultation on IHR implementation and public health measures in response to public health emergencies at ports, airports and ground crossings held in Lyon in France 9-11 December, 2009.

Principles and values
Partnership is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to work cooperatively towards the common goal of implementing an international agreement without renouncing States Parties' mandates and priorities. The opportunity is to learn and progress collectively towards better public health practices at points of entry.

Shared responsibility
Public health threats recognize no national borders. In the present global village context, control and response measures for public health threats call for collective and coordinated action among partners across international boundaries, industrial or economic sectors and governmental and non governmental organizations. Health security for all is a recognized global public good.

Inclusiveness
PAGnet welcome individuals and organizations (public and private) and all who share the vision, mission and values of PAGnet Partnership to work to achieve capacity requirements provided under IHR (2005), as well as to ensure acceptable levels of health, hygiene and sanitation standards at ports, airports and ground crossings.

Consensus
Recognizing the diversity of mandates and priorities of each individual partner, we function through a process of consensus to corporately reach agreement on priorities. The network acts in a coordinated manner based on the comparative strengths of individual partners.

Sustainability
Public health threats have no time limitations and they continue to cause mortality and morbidity to humans as well as animals and come with severe economic consequence to States, sectors and economic units of national and international significance. We share a commitment to effective and sustained action, and emphasize strengthening capacity at national, regional, sectoral levels.

Dynamism
From a global perspective, the volume, and frequency of economic activities of the three sectors involved plus technology, manpower and infrastructure involved and their impact on national and global economies provide a glimpse to the challenges encountered by these sectors. With the help of partners, PAGnet is seeking to develop innovative mechanisms that support effective and concerted action.

WHO role in PAGNet: WHO acts as the PAGNET moderator and follows the rules and regulations of WHO for its administrative, financial and human resources management.