On the 3-5 April 2024 NPHSL representatives were visiting the HERA Symposium in Brussels, Belgium. Four HADEA funded programs conducted initial discussions. Programmes: The “EU-HIP” project evaluates the preparedness of participating countries to investigate and report country’s potential risks and emergency situations using Athena platform (Lithuania represented by HESC); The “EU-WISH” Joint Action is designed to assess countries’ strategy, improve national capacities in wastewater surveillance and offer a new study method that includes a novel public health assessment system (Lithuania represented by NPHSL); The “DURABLE” project involves public health researchers, who aim to develop risk assessment algorithms and implement modelling methods for critical health situations to be able to prevent, solve and control such cases in the future (Lithuania is not represented); The „HERA“ project focuses on strengthening the capacities of the national laboratories, improving and implementing genome sequencing of infectious agents and assessing EU countries’ ability to identify outbreaks as well as recognise potential pandemic threats at both the national and international levels (Lithuania represented by NPHSL).
The main aim of these programmes is to timely respond and inform European health institutions about emerging biological threats and infectious pathogens that demonstrate a pandemic potential.
During the symposium HERA leaders and ECDC representatives presented tasks that have to be accomplished by participating EU countries. They shared an idea that the set goals will be successfully achieved through cooperation between countries and projects. In the first session, participants from different EU project teams communicated with each other. The countries had to present their achievements and failures that they faced in their journey towards program goals. It was a particularly engaging coordinators’ decision to share the problems occurring in the countries with other countries. In the end, country representatives were asked to describe the successes and failures that shared their colleagues from other countries participating in the project. Particular attention was paid to the communication and cooperation with relevant institutions at both the horizontal and vertical levels. In the second session, case studies involving AMR, outbreak of vector-borne diseases and others, were provided to the session participants to be discussed and solved. Countries, representing different programs, cooperated and proposed measures and solutions for the management and control of these public health threats.
At the end of the discussions, it was suggested that project coordinators would help representatives from countries, especially those who do not have much experience in solving the project related problems at both the technical and communication levels. The conclusions of this symposium included strengthening cooperation between EU countries and different programs, improving communication and emergency preparedness across Europe.
