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Evaluation of Implementation of Regional Flagship Areas in the WHO South-East Asia Region 2014-2018
Nov 24, 2020

IQVIA ‘s public health division provides different services in the health domain. With the overall objective of improving health and impacting people through innovation, data driven solutions, IQVIA aims to catalyze the ‘health for all’ mission. One of the key areas it worked for instance was the independent evaluation of WHO-SEARO project. This ensured that different stakeholders-decision makers at WHO, Ministry officials and health experts were enabled with over-arching, critical analyses of the project. It aimed to assess the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of WHO ‘s role in progress and impact on the regional flagship areas (2014-18). The independent evaluation also provided individual recommendations, challenges along with overall analysis. The eight regional flagship areas included measles elimination and rubella control, prevention of NCDs, unfinished MDGs agenda, UHC, AMR, scaling capacity development in emergency risk management countries, finishing the unfinished business of elimination of Kala Azar, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis and yaws and acceleration of efforts to end TB by 2030. The evaluation study employed a mixed-method approach. The main reason was to support the quantitative information through qualitative findings. The process was triangulated through extensive literature reviews from 2014-2018, and key stakeholders’ interviews (which included administrative, technical leads from ministry and key technical donor agencies).

The accelerating factors were discussed in detail in order to compile the factors which enabled the member states to drive advancements on flagship areas. Factors which helped in the progress were broadly: enhanced commitment from member states, improved financial support, advocacy efforts to generate buy-in from partners, improved health systems and institutional capacity. In order to provide a 360-degree view, the challenges were classified as technical and operational. Some of the technical challenges included monitoring and evaluation, multisectoral coordination and special emphasis on equity. The operational challenges included sustainability, funding amongst others. It is worth mentioning that five countries have successfully eliminated measles and six have controlled rubella and 10 member states have enrolled in Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS).

Since version 2.0 of Regional Flagship Area has been launched in 2019 Regional Committee Meeting the recommendation from this evaluation along with the analysis can be a guiding map. It also serves a complete in-depth analysis for such future projects.

Maheshwari N, Chauhan K, Sharma K, Sharma M, and team. IQVIA consulting & Information Services India Pvt. Ltd. 2020. Evaluation of Implementation of Regional Flagship Areas in the WHO South-East Asia Region 2014-2018. New Delhi. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/evaluation-reports/evaluation-of-implementation-of-regional-flagship-areas-in-who-sea-region-2014-18.pdf?sfvrsn=db3cad60_2

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