EU HEALTHY GATEWAYS JOINT ACTION PREPAREDNESS AND ACTION AT POINTS OF ENTRY (PORTS, AIRPORTS, GROUND CROSSINGS)

Ground-Crossings

05  Ground Crossings

 

Work Package leaders: 

National Institute of Public Health - National Institute of Hygiene (NIPH-NIH), Poland

National Public Health Center (NVSC), Lithuania

 

The ground crossings  work package consists of actions for preparedness at ground crossings and the land transport sector.

 

Objectives:

  • Producing a State of the Art Report on Ground Crossings
  • Establishing the ground crossings component of a network for communication and rapid notification in the event of a cross-border health risk
  • Producing best practice catalogues, guidelines and validated action plans for ground crossings, covering all types of health threats, contingency planning, risk communication and advice for event management

Main tasks:

  • A Working Group for Ground Crossings consisting of technical experts in matters related to ground crossings will be established.
  • A State of the art report for Ground Crossings will be produced.
  • Site visits of the Work Package 5 Coordinators will be conducted to key-countries with external EU borders, to assist the situation analysis.
  • A legal advisor will be subcontracted to assist in the development of the State of the Art Report, specifically the legal framework and the vector control aspect. Authorities dealing with vector surveillance from entomological departments will be consulted.
  • Work Package 5 will coordinate the development of training material to be used for a European level training of the trainers’ course titled “Preparedness and response to public health events at ground crossings”.
  • A regional workshop will be conducted and organized on challenges and best practices for public health measures at ground crossings.
  • A model MoU for cooperation among EU MS and neighboring non-EU MS that share land borders will be developed. This model MoU can be adopted by EU MS in their bilateral cooperation for preparedness and repose to cross border health threats.
  • A model MoU for rules of cooperation among different competent authorities at ground crossings, at the local level that need to be involved in the response of public health events will be developed.

Deliverables:

A State of the Art Report for ground crossings providing situational analysis, best practices, legal frameworks, needs assessment, the role of vectors at ground crossings, and lessons learnt from past public health events.

Strengthening core capacities at ground crossings through the production of: best practices on core capacities implementation for event detection, surveillance & management & contingency planning; workshop for public health measures - ground crossings; advice/guidance for COVID-19.