Supporting compliance with the International Health Regulations (IHR) is the goal of the UK Health Security Agency's (UKHSA) International Health Regulations Strengthening Project (IHR-SP). Amongst efforts to achieve this, IHR-SP contributes to strengthening public health institutions and partners to enhance their capacity to prevent, prepare for, detect, and respond to various public health threats. As part of this, IHR-SP has been providing technical support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Biological Threats Surveillance Centre (ABVC).

The ABVC was established as the regional biological threats surveillance centre for ASEAN. It serves the following functions:

1. To develop and strengthen biological threats surveillance in the ASEAN region by providing a regional centre for infectious and emerging diseases surveillance, linked to national, regional and global disease surveillance organisations and partners.

2. To support the ASEAN region to strengthen health security by establishing effective biological threats surveillance intelligence sharing through information systems and relationships.

In the last three years, ABVC has been producing regular media monitoring reports on infectious and emerging diseases and sharing the information across ASEAN Member States (AMS). To amplify information sharing, the centre has also conducted webinars or workshops on various topics related to public health threats.

In February 2025, the IHR-SP facilitated a three-day workshop to support ABVC to review and refine its remit, strategy and roadmap. These discussions will inform ABVC’s refined Terms of Reference (ToR), strategy and workplan, reflecting relevance with current situation and aligning with the ASEAN Post-2025 Health Development Agenda. This was an important step for ABVC to highlight its role in the region. These will help them obtaining support from AMS in order to fulfil its functions and to ensure ABVC’s sustainability.

The IHR-SP team engaged with ABVC, representatives of the Ministry of Health Indonesia as ABVC’s current host country, representatives of ASEAN Mitigation of Biological Threats (MBT) Programme, and the leadership team of ASEAN Centre for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases Indonesia responsible for Detection and Risk Assessment.

During the workshop, the IHR-SP shared learning about surveillance and data sharing, using examples from the United Kingdom and other regions such as Europe and Africa. Participants discussed about legal framework for data sharing, ways of working and methodologies of data collection and analysis suitable for ABVC to fulfil its remit.

As continuation of its technical support, the UKHSA IHR-SP will work together with ABVC throughout the refinement and strengthening process. The refreshed ToR, strategy and workplan will be presented to the ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on Health Development for endorsement before implementation.