PROGRAMME OBJECTIVE
EPIC11's goal is to create a comprehensive EU preparedness training programme and EU and national-tailored capacity building activities, based on recent COVID-19 response to the pandemic and the ambitions to strengthen the public health emergency response capacity of EU countries by forming a European Health Union.
During three years, the COVID-19 crisis created an unprecedented health crisis with severe consequences for European societies and economies.
The lesson learnt from this experience was that Eu countries and European Economic Area (EEA) countries need to be better prepared within their own borders but also working together to address cross-border threats and pandemics. This is why the EU is developing a preparedness training programme taking into acoount the different levels of capacities that may exist across countries, in order to respond better to future emergencies.
The training will combine both, academic excellence with context specific knowhow as each and every EU country is different with regards to their public health systems, agencies involved in emergency response, political economy, decision making structures, environmental conditions and many more aspects.
This EU preparedness training programme is complementary to existing training programmes from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Trainings such as the EPIET-EUPHEM and MediPIET have been designed to assist EU countries and the Commission to train specialists, particularly in epidemiological surveillance and field investigations, and to build the capacity to define health measures to control disease outbreaks. By including the EU preparedness training in the ECDC Virtual Academy (EVA), the EU will be able to offer a comprehensive, yet modular package to each EU country and EEA countries in response to individual countries´ needs.
The EU Commission has a history in the area of preparedness: in 1998 a legislation on epidemiological surveillance of communicable diseases was approved by the EU Parliament and Council. This action was followed by the creation of the EU Health Security Committee in 2001, the ECDC in 2005. In 2013, the decision 1082/2013/EU on serious cross-border threats to health2 laid out the core legal basis for a coherent EU health security framework (HSF). Based on the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 response, this framework will extend the role of the EU to ensure cooperation and support to EU countries in preparedness and response measures throughout multiple structures and mechanisms.
The project start in January 2023 and will advance until December 2025.
Programme Tasks
1. IDENTIFY THE TRAINING AUDIENCES, TRAINING NEEDS
2. MAPPING PREPAREDNESS AND RESONSE TRAINING PROGRAMMES
3. CREATING A MODULAR EU PREPAREDNESS TRAINING PROGRAMME
4. PILOTING THE PREPAREDNESS TRAINING PROGRAMME