The first official meeting was attended by representatives of the partner organizations in the cross-border project.
The aim of the EGALURG Project is to improve emergency and disaster healthcare on both sides of the Pyrenees. The project was created based on collaboration between the Toulouse University Hospital (CHUT), Navarrabiomed, Emergency Medical Services of Catalonia, and the Hospital Center of the Basque Coast in Bayonne. The meeting was held in Toulouse on Thursday, 19 December 2019, to mark the official kick-off of the project, lay down the project’s fundamental principles and establish the actions to be implemented by each partner.
The meeting was held at the old hospital, Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques, with the attendance of each partner organization’s representatives, all of whom have broad experience in implementing European network projects. Through research and the implementation of innovative infrastructure, the aim is to promote equal access to healthcare in isolated population groups, emergencies and disasters. To this end, at this first meeting, the representatives from the different regions established the criteria required for combining protocols and training healthcare professionals.
Also established at the meeting were the principles of how the project would work and be coordinated by the CHUT, the project leader. It was agreed that two meetings of the partners would be held each year. The next meeting will be held in Navarre in June 2020. The partners are thus able to start working on their respective actions, such as creating maps for setting up joint triage and screening systems, with an inventory of emergency units in the cross-border area, organizing continuous training for healthcare professionals, combining databases on polytrauma from different healthcare centers with the aim of implementing effective action protocols, and building innovative facilities for training and improving emergency and disaster healthcare.
The total budget to carry out EGALURG comes to €2,343,192, of which €1,523,075 (65%) have been co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through Interreg Program V-A Spain-France-Andorra (POCTEFA 2014-2020). The goal of the POCTEFA program is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the Spain-France-Andorra cross-border area. Its help is focused on developing cross-border economic, social and environmental projects through joint strategies in favor of sustainable regional development.
