National Health Risk Assessment and Mapping Using the WHO Strategic Tool for Assessing a Risk (STAR), in Madagascar from 2022 to 2025

Madagascar regularly faces disasters and health emergencies. It is one of the countries vulnerable to various disaster risks and climate change. Since 2014, the country has been affected by large-scale epidemics and natural disasters. In order to strengthen prevention, preparedness, response, and resilience to health threats, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that countries conduct a health risk assessment and mapping as the first step in the emergency management cycle in the context of limited resources and update the risk profile every three years. The objectives are to identify and characterize the various priority health risks in Madagascar, assess the probability of their occurrence, estimate their potential impact, determine the estimated level of risk, categorize them, and map them in order to formulate key recommendations. This is a qualitative, multisectoral, and multi-hazard assessment, combined with national health risk mapping using the WHO's Strategic Tool for Assessing Risk (STAR). The first assessment was conducted in 2022, followed by an update of the health risk profile in 2025. The results obtained in 2022 identified 23 health threats out of the 96 identified. In 2025, during the update, 21 threats were retained, including 3 threats that were removed.