Hospitals must be prepared to respond effectively to a wide range of emergencies, while maintaining essential health services. In Poland, strengthening hospital resilience has become an increasing priority in light of evolving risks – including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents; heat waves; mass casualty incidents; and other emergencies that place significant pressure on health systems.
Building on the successful introduction of the WHO Hospital Safety Index in Poland in 2025 and the launch of the Hospital Emergency Response Plan (H-ERP) initiative through a webinar on 17 June 2026, WHO, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Poland, is supporting the next phase of work to strengthen hospital emergency preparedness. This phase focuses on supporting hospitals to begin developing structured emergency response plans using a common national framework adapted to the Polish context and guided by WHO and international standards.
The workshop, to be held on 3–4 September 2026, will bring together representatives from pilot hospitals in Mazowieckie province, as well as the Ministry of Health and WHO. Building on the national H-ERP framework developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, participants will work to adapt and begin populating the framework for their own facilities. Through technical and facilitated working sessions, hospital teams will develop the core components of their emergency response plans – including hospital incident management, activation procedures, evacuation planning, mass casualty management, surge capacity, logistics and coordination with external partners.
By the end of the workshop, each participating hospital is expected to have developed an initial draft of its H-ERP. These draft plans will serve as the basis for continued refinement and validation, while lessons learned during the workshop will help further improve the national H-ERP framework. Together, these outputs will lay the foundation for a standardized approach to hospital emergency response planning and support the future scale-up of H-ERP across Poland.
This initiative is funded by the European Union’s EU4Health programme.