Outbreak Investigation and Response Workshop

The WHO Regional Office for Europe, together with the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany, arranged a workshop, under the aegis of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework, on outbreak investigation and response (OIR) on 16-18 December 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Participants
included representatives from the national Sanitary Epidemiological Service/Communicable Disease Centre (head, deputy head, lead for outbreak response, national influenza focal point) and the postgraduate training institute involved in outbreak response training; from Armenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The meeting focused on the development of operational OIR guidelines and their implementation including: intercountry exchange on OIR guidelines and training, introduction to best practices in operational guidance development, review of national OIR guidelines and planning next steps for revision and implementation of the guidelines. Countries concluded that a national generic OIR operational guideline should be developed which is flexible enough to be used for emerging/atypical pathogens. Also, that implementation should be conducted through training on the guideline content by national post-graduate training institutes.