This is our third article in a series introducing the Organizational Resilience Management System (ORMS), which engages in a full array of preparedness, prevention, response and recovery activities to ensure continuity of operations and maintain safety and security of UN personnel in a crisis.
The Medical Services Division (MSD) in the Office of Human Resources Management is responsible for directing medical emergency support and the provisioning of occupational health services to staff at UN Headquarters as well at UN field locations. The Division coordinates the UN Medical Emergency Response Team (UNMERT), which works on all aspects of emergency preparedness with a focus on training and capacity development. UNMERT also conducts field visits with on-site reviews of contingency plans and Mass Casualty Plans.
The Medical Services Division provides policy, guidance and support on public health emergencies by collecting pertinent information and publishing guidelines for staff members on websites on the HR Portal specifically created for influenza and other pandemic threats.
The Director of MSD, as Chair of the UN System Medical Directors’ working group, oversees system-wide responses to health threats for UN personnel, such as the recent UN system response to the Zika epidemic. The UN Medical Emergency Response Team has the capacity to deploy specially trained team members from around the world to assist with the medical management of and recovery from large scale incidents. Examples of such deployments were the UN House bombing in Abuja, Nigeria, and - more recently – in support of Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis.
Please stay tuned to iSeek, as the ORMS team will continue this series of articles over the coming weeks to introduce staff to our work. For further information on Medical Services, please visit the iSeek page or email: msdpublichealth@un.org.
To learn more about the Organizational Resilience Management System, see our iSeek page or contact the Business Continuity Management Unit at bcmu@un.org.