Emergency planning and business continuity: why blood services must plan for both. How the EBA working group (WG) is assisting blood services

BackgroundIn 2016, the Executive of the European Blood Alliance (EBA) decided to explore whether there was sufficient interest amongst member countries on whether they saw value in the re‐establishment of a Working Group on contingency planning. A survey of members was carried out and as there was sufficient interest a Working Group (WG) was established. The question then was how could the work of the WG add value to member countries in their contingency planning process? We set out to establish this. MethodMembers of the WG decided that there were three areas where the WG should concentrate on and these were as follows: (1) share lessons learnt during past contingencies and response to major disasters, (2) exchange contingency plans and (3) test run of contingency plans. As a first step, it was decided that we would share our existing contingency plans and when these were shared the WG undertook to carry out a gap analysis. It became evident that the state of contingency planning varied across countries. It is vitally important that each BTS ensures that their critical functions of manufacturing, testing and supply management have contingency arrangements in place whether that is within the country or with an international partner. However, having them in place is not enough they must be tested on a regular basis to ensure that they work. It was important that the WG formulated formal terms of reference to inform its work and also to set out clear deliverables. Draft Terms...
Source: ISBT Science Series - Category: Hematology Authors: Tags: Congress Review Source Type: research