, 2025-04-15 05:10:00
The European Union (EU) has introduced its “Preparedness Union Strategy,” designed to strengthen resilience in emergencies such as natural disasters, pandemics, cyberattacks, and armed conflict. This initiative is inspired by models already adopted in Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, which have implemented similar measures to prepare their populations for crises or conflicts. The document lists 30 key actions to address emergencies, including protecting essential social functions, promoting population preparedness through education and simulation exercises, and strengthening civil-military and public-private cooperation.
Healthcare is central to this plan, with the EU emphasising a shift from reactive measures to a structural approach focused on prevention, forecasting, and response to avoid being unprepared for future crises.
The document speaks of the “vital functions of society” to be protected in all circumstances, with healthcare positioned as a key element — not only for emergency care but also for maintaining social unity during a prolonged crisis.
Key Measures
The strategy includes specific measures to strengthen public health, hospitals, and medical care systems.
- Minimum preparedness criteria for essential services: This strategy includes the development of minimum preparedness criteria for essential services, including hospitals, schools, transportation, and telecommunications, to ensure functionality during emergencies.
- Strengthening cybersecurity in healthcare facilities: The European Commission has launched an action plan to strengthen cybersecurity in hospitals and healthcare providers, establishing a Cybersecurity Support Centre to provide specific guidance, tools, services, and training.
- Diversification of medicine supplies: Health ministers from 11 EU countries have recommended reducing dependence on a limited number of countries for the supply of vital medicines, such as antibiotics and anaesthetics, by promoting local production and centralised storage to improve preparedness for future health crises.
- Establishment of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority: The authority was created to assess potential health threats, promote research, ensure the availability of critical production, and contribute to the creation of strategic stockpiles of medical equipment.
Local Healthcare Overlooked
Despite its comprehensive scope, the strategy appears to underemphasise local healthcare services, such as primary and home-based care, focusing instead on strategic reserves, field hospitals, and emergency logistics.
“Today in Italy there is no project, and too little is still done for the training of healthcare professionals, even if the first thing to do is to train local doctors in disaster medicine,” Professor Enrico Bernini Carri told Univadis Italy, a Medscape Network platform.
Carri is an Italian infectious disease specialist and general physician serving in the Italian Army Reserve. He holds the position of professor of organisation and management of major emergencies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. From 1987 until 2022, he served as the president of the European Centre for Disaster Medicine in San Marino, a specialised centre under the Council of Europe.
“The courses are activated on request, based on the needs of the institutions that contact us. For example, the basic course for health workers operating in the territory includes an orientation day in which doctors and nurses participate in simulations learning to form autonomous work groups,” he explained, emphasising that in emergency situations, panic is often fuelled by poor coordination and inadequate communication.
Emergency Kits and Communication Challenges
The EU’s strategy also includes a “resilience kit” to help citizens independently manage the first 72 hours of an emergency, thereby reducing pressure on the rescue network dealing with real emergencies.
However, the roll-out faced criticism for lack of clarity. Communications on social media conflated scenarios where a family stays at home with basic necessities — perhaps enjoying a pasta alla puttanesca, as mentioned by Hadja Lahbib, the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness, and Crisis Management — with situations where they must evacuate quickly in search of shelter. This ambiguity has led to confusion about the kit’s intended use.
Expert Recommendations
According to the EU’s strategic document, strengthening rapid alert systems must include dialogue with local actors, including general practitioners, community nurses, and pharmacists, who can serve as key hubs for transmitting reliable and prompt information at both national and local levels.
To achieve this, the mobilisation of institutions at all levels will be necessary, a process that will require time. However, Carri hopes that local healthcare providers will immediately mobilise to acquire these skills, which are currently the prerogative of only a few in Italy and in Europe.
Meanwhile, Univadis Italy asked him to list the essential resources that doctors can suggest their patients keep — along with a small supply of their regular medications — in a bag ready to grab in case they need to leave home in a hurry. The idea is that each healthcare professional should consider the specific needs of their most vulnerable patients, including those caring for disabled persons. His suggestions are as follows:
Essential Items for an Emergency Kit
For outdoor shelter needs, the following may be useful: A silver thermal blanket, windproof matches or a windproof lighter (optional: 3-4 “diavolina” tablets to light the fire), and a 3 × 2 m resistant plastic sheet.
For first aid: Plasters, or better yet, a roll of medical tape; sterile gauze compresses; a self-adhesive bandage; a tourniquet (tourniquet type); painkillers (preferably 1000 mg paracetamol); chlorine tablets (to make water drinkable and as a disinfectant in appropriate dilutions); anti-burn cream; imidazoline eye drops or similar (optional: Suction cup to remove poison; anti-diarrhoeal tablets); and a supply of medications for chronic diseases of family members.
Also, add personal hygiene items, such as wet wipes and feminine hygiene products, protective masks, and disposable gloves.
Protein bars and sugar cubes are practical and take up little space for food; a sachet of salt is also useful (to rehydrate in case of sweating), and obviously, a water bottle with drinking water.
In case you need to signal your presence from afar, it is advisable to have a high-powered halogen battery (rechargeable by hand crank or solar panel); a whistle; a solar panel power bank and cables for charging your cell phone (a candle may also be useful); 2 m of nylon cord; and a topographic map of the area.
Additionally, those who assist a physically disabled person may need to prepare a sturdy plastic sheet with handles for carrying people and a mattress (rollable foam rubber or inflatable). To reduce the stress of a mentally disabled person, it is useful to have a supply of commonly used tranquilisers and bring some familiar objects to which the person is attached.
For the visually impaired and blind, in addition to a cane for the blind and any pets, a radio or cell phone with a power bank is useful.
Finally, if the disabled person is dependent on drugs, it is useful to have a waterproof case that can be worn around the neck with a description of their pathology and the list of necessary medications, along with a small bag containing essential medications that will last for at least a week.
For all disabled patients, it is advisable to use a card placed around the neck with the name and contact details of the disabled person and the people to contact (even those far from the site of the disaster). A red, yellow, or green coloured band can be used to indicate the degree of urgency for pharmacological treatment or care by the healthcare system.
This story was translated from Univadis Italy using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.