The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) wishes to invite Member States to identify representatives to participate in an assistance and protection capacity-building project on the subject of chemical incident preparedness for hospitals and health care facilities.
The project will be organised by the Technical Secretariat (hereinafter “the Secretariat”) and the Government of Turkey and will engage up to 20 administrators or clinical managers who are directly involved with the internal policies of a hospital or health care facility in an OPCW Member State. The project will require a considerable commitment from each participant, whose inputs are to include:
- the completion and submission of a facility assessment;
- participation in an assistance and protection workshop focusing on hospital operations during a chemical incident; and
- the completion and implementation of an “action plan” subsequent to the workshop.
The programme of the workshop will be determined according to the content of the completed assessments, and will address specific needs identified through the analysis of the data collected. The workshop will therefore focus on equipping participants to address the identified needs and effect positive change in their respective facilities with regard to chemical incident preparedness. Assessment data will be used by the project team only and will not be made public.
The workshop, to be held from 22 to 26 October 2018, will be hosted by the University of Health Sciences, Department of Medical CBRN1 Defence in Ankara, Turkey.