Case studies on preparedness planning for polio in Poland and Cyprus

Decision 1082/2013/EU on serious cross-border health threats provides a legal basis for collaboration and information exchange between EU Member States and between international and European-level institutions on preparedness planning, prevention, and mitigation in the event of a public health emergency. Specific attention is paid in the Decision to arrangements aimed at ensuring interoperability between the health sector and other sectors identified as being critical in the case of a public health emergency. This multisectoral and cross-border approach to preparedness is a relatively new policy area, and there remain some uncertainties about what it involves. While people in the health sector are very familiar with planning for outbreaks, the intersectoral and cross-border planning issues are not so widely understood. In June 2015, the European Regional Certification Commission for Poliomyelitis Eradication (RCC) reviewed the annual updates for 2014 on the status of the national polio eradication programmes submitted by the Member States of the WHO European Region. The report of the meeting concluded that the risk of importation and subsequent transmission of poliovirus in the WHO European Region remains high in some European countries. The subsequent annual RCC meeting, in June 2016, reiterated this point , although some new countries were now identified as being at elevated risk, while other countries had been removed from the list. This indicates that protecting the European Region from polio remains a significant and dynamic challenge, and that long-term efforts are required to bring about and sustain a minimal level of risk.