EU announces New Joint Action to Strengthen Preparedness

The Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (Chafea) announces a new joint action on on preparedness in the EU. The action should support EU Member States' cooperation and coordination, strengthening the resilience and response capacities of health systems, and ensuring coherence and interoperability for preparedness and response planning to health threats at national, EU and regional level.

It will have two main areas of action:

•  improving preparedness and response planning for serious cross-border threats and the Implementation of International Health Regulations in EU Member States, EEA/EFTA and neighbouring countries;
•  improving capacity of public health laboratories in collaboration with the ECDC, for a reference network of European microbiology laboratories specialised in highly pathogenic or newly emerging pathogens.

The Joint action, which will be funded under the Annual work plan 2018 of the Third EU Health Programme (HP3) with an EC co-funding of € 7.9 million, should start early next year and run for 36 months. It includes competent authorities from 30 EU countries participating in HP3 (25 Member States, 2 EFTA/EEA countries (Island and Norway) and three ENP countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Moldova).