WHO has developed a tool to assist countries in strengthening their multisectoral operational core capabilities to detect and respond quickly and effectively. Being ready at any time to detect and respond decreases the impact of an emergency and allows the country and its communities to withstand a crisis, building resilience and a stronger health system.
Introducing the CAPE tool
The core capabilities action planning for emergencies (CAPE) tool takes a standardized and evidence-driven approach to allow countries to identify gaps in their core capabilities for response and build a matrix of prioritized actions. The resulting action matrix is designed to be integrated into countries’ operational plans (such as their contingency plans).
The capabilities outlined in the tool are those identified as essential for an efficient response to all type of hazards, including unknown or unexpected events.
The same approach can be envisaged to cover a range of epidemic or pandemic-prone proxy diseases, encompassing various modes of transmission and mitigation or control measures. Additionally, threat-specific checklists will soon be available for imminent and recurring risks, such as seasonal threats.
The tool has been made available digitally on the Partners Platform and released with the training modules.
Partners Platform
The CAPE tool has been published on the Partners Platform, a digital tool maintained by WHO to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing amongst stakeholders involved in strengthening health emergency core capabilities for response operations.
Partners and government officials can make use of the online space to develop an action matrix to scale up their core capabilities across health emergency functions and systems.
An offline version of the CAPE tool is available for download.
CAPE training version
To facilitate the use of the CAPE tool, a training version is available to any interested member of the public, hosted using the Partners Platform.
The online training version of the tool is designed to simulate the functionality of the live tool but is intended for training purposes only.
Online training modules
Operationalizing core capabilities is a critical aspect of readiness for response. Readiness requires collective responsibility and collaboration across all stakeholders, from communities to national and international organizations. Communities play a vital role as first responders, and their engagement and ownership of readiness initiatives are essential. To enhance knowledge and skills in health emergency readiness for response operations, WHO has further created introductory training modules through the OpenWHO platform. These modules cover various aspects of the CAPE tool.
