In 2007, East Asia and the Pacific and South Asia regions faced an increased number of natural disasters, epidemics of infectious diseases, and renewed outbreaks of violence and conflicts. Avian influenza continued to circulate throughout East Asia and the Pacific and emerged as a greater danger in South Asia, threatening livelihoods of families and the health of children in some of the most vulnerable communities of both regions. Planned Humanitarian Action for 2008:
The chapter covers two UNICEF regions: South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific. Key activities will include: * Continue supporting emergency preparedness and response capacity-building activities, especially for reinforcing linkages leading from preparedness to early action at the country level in order to ensure minimum levels of readiness; * Improve the effectiveness of humanitarian response by ensuring greater predictability, accountability and partnership. Further strengthen, through cluster-specific trainings and tools, the dissemination of the cluster approach in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education, nutrition and protection, for which UNICEF has been given the global responsibility. Continue to advocate and support Country Offices to organize inter-agency emergency preparedness and response planning events; * Ensure provision of direct assistance to Country Offices affected by new, emerging crises, including inter-agency coordination, fundraising, serving as the liaison between Headquarters and Country Offices and deploying additional expertise as required; * Develop regional surge capacity rosters to further strengthen comprehensive rapid response in the event of new humanitarian crises; * Strengthen the information management component within all emergency and response activities through continued enhanced collaboration with regional participatory monitoring and evaluation colleagues; * Continue working on risk communication and emergency communication systems to increase community resilience to cope with and respond to a range of threats, including a human influenza pandemic. Collaborate with UN partners on pandemic preparedness initiatives to increase national capacity to prepare for and respond to a pandemic. Integrate avian and human pandemic influenza work within broader emergency preparedness and response systems.