PANDEMRIC is an amalgamation of the words pandemic and EMRIC. PANDEMRIC is supporting EMRIC in work related to the COVID crisis. PANDEMRIC therefore focuses on promoting Euroregional cooperation in the event of a pandemic or large-scale outbreak of an infectious disease.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, it quickly became clear that crisis policies were often implemented at the national level. Existing Euroregional networks were more or less overruled. Dis-coordination between the countries created numerous bottlenecks in the border regions, which proved detrimental to the citizens of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR). PANDEMRIC therefore focuses on promoting Euroregional cooperation in the event of a pandemic or large-scale outbreak of an infectious disease.
ITEM study: Cross-border Cooperation on Ambulance and Intensive Care Transport – Examining Opportunities to Strengthen Cooperation
The complexity of organizing ambulance and emergency services at the cross-border level combined with the multitude of existing forms of cooperation leads to questions about which obstacles are most persistent and how they can be resolved. A key question in this regard concerns the deployment of ambulance personnel and the recognition of their qualifications. However, there are other issues related to signaling, transportation of opiates and reimbursement by insurers. Against this background, a thorough analysis of the current status of cross-border ambulance care in the Dutch-Belgian-German border region is needed to structurally enable such care in the future along the entire Dutch border with Belgium and Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia).
