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Pandemic preparedness
in South Eastern Europe
Michala Hegermann-Lindencrone, Maria Haralanova, Altin Malaj and Caroline Brown, WHO Regional Office for Europe
and Silvia Bino, Institute of Public Health in Albania
T
he World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for
Europe has held the secretariat function for the South
Eastern European
1
(SEE) Health Network (HN) since
2001.
In 2002 a specific project on surveillance and control of communi-
cable diseases was established, which includes strengthening of
pandemic preparedness and response within the framework of the
SEE HN. This work is supported by the Communicable Diseases unit
(CDS) of the WHO Regional Office for Europe through the provi-
sion of technical support and guidance in SEE countries.
Strengthening pandemic preparedness in SEE
The majority of the national pandemic preparedness plans in SEE
were drafted in 2005 under the project of strengthening surveillance
and control of infectious diseases. It was also in this year that the
WHO Regional Office for Europe, together with the European
Commission (EC), organized the first joint workshop on pandemic
preparedness for the (at that time) 52 Member States in
the WHO European Region. Since then, an additional
three joint workshops held by the WHO Regional Office
for Europe the EC and the European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control (ECDC) on pandemic prepared-
ness have taken place and representatives from all SEE
countries have been attending. The areas being addressed
at the workshops have changed as pandemic prepared-
ness in the countries has developed.
Specific workshops in the framework of the surveil-
lance and control of communicable diseases in SEE
countries have also addressed pandemic influenza,
beginning in 2006 at the fifth and sixth SEE HN regional
workshops, ‘Strengthening surveillance and control of
communicable diseases in SEE’, which were organized
by SEE project and the WHO Regional Office for Europe
in Sofia, Bulgaria and Belgrade, Serbia. The subject was
on the agenda again in 2008 at the SEE HN’s eighth
regional workshop, ‘Strengthening surveillance and
control of communicable diseases in SEE’, where
pandemic preparedness was the focus. This workshop
was organized jointly by the WHO Regional Office for
Europe, ECDC and SEE HN.
In the period between the workshops, all countries in
the SEE region worked to strengthen their preparedness
for the next influenza pandemic. In 2008, within the frame-
work of the SEE HN project addressing pandemic
preparedness, the WHO Regional Office for Europe with
participation of SEE regional experts carried out assess-
ment visits to all countries within the region to evaluate
their level of preparedness, identify how to help them
further improve and to provide technical input on areas of
pandemic preparedness identified by the country.
Assessment visits to the candidate countries in the EUwere
carried out jointly with the ECDC, while the two EU coun-
tries in the SEE region were visited and assessed in 2007 by
ECDC, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the EC.
Pandemic preparedness assessment visits in SEE
The country visits followed a methodology applied in
EU Member States in 2006-7, which was developed by
the WHO Regional Office for Europe and ECDC and
has resulted in the ECDC pandemic preparedness assess-
ment tool.
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Assessment mission to Serbia
Image: Silvia Bino