Consultation of the ECDC Competent Bodies for Preparedness and Response

The Competent Bodies (CBs) are ECDC’s primary points of contact when looking for scientific expertise in the Member States. During the October 2008 meeting of ECDC’s CBs for Preparedness, the discussion mainly focused on ECDC’s role in generic preparedness. While the Health Security Committee addresses generic preparedness in the EU, ECDC has an important role in providing technical support to the work of the Health Security Committee and supporting Member States with specific elements of generic preparedness plans. In a separate session, the CBs for Response reviewed the latest version of a document on ‘Guiding principles for response’. They also discussed some of ECDC’s response activities, e.g. EU-level threat assessments following EWRS event notifications.