In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a training workshop was conducted for 26 Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) managers from several countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, and Sudan. The workshop was held in Amman, Jordan, over four days between June 7 and 10, 2021, focusing on countries that are affected by or are at high risk of health emergencies and humanitarian crises. The workshop comes at a very crucial time where countries around the world are still facing the COVID-19 pandemic.

This regional workshop is a step to further enable managers in developing and deploying RRTs, who assume a key role in emergency response in line with the International Health Regulations (2005), and in coordinating cross-border response to emergencies through effective and efficient RRT frameworks. RRT Management, in particular, is an important base for establishing and maintaining an international, regional and national RRT program. Specifically, effective RRT management sets the foundation for the development of sustainable and effective RRTs that are trained and equipped to be rapidly deployed to a public health emergency. Such deployments can be most effective if coordinated within a larger emergency response framework.

The workshop’s trainers are experts from the CDC and GHD|EMPHNET. The trainees were professionals involved in decision-making for public health emergency response at the national, and subnational levels. They are emergency managers, coordinators, RRT managers, managers of Emergency Operation Centers, and Field Epidemiology Training Programs affiliates.

Sessions focused on equipping participants with the knowledge and tools necessary to establish, build, manage, deploy, and evaluate public health RRTs. The workshop covered the seven main components essential to effective RRT development and management: Staffing and Rostering, Administrative Considerations, Training, Activation and Pre-Deployment, Deployment, and Post-Deployment and Monitoring, Evaluation and Improvement Planning.

A session was dedicated to introducing cross-border considerations related to the types of activities that RRTs may encounter at the border, especially the information that needs to be shared with neighboring countries and needed processes to support RRT activities beyond national borders. Supported facilitators, each country drafted and presented SOPs that covered the seven main RRT Management components.

RRT training remains GHD|EMPHNET’s focus within its work in emergency preparedness and response. Over the past decade, GHD|EMPHNET trained almost 1200 emergency rapid responders from several countries across the region. These responders contributed to strengthening public health emergency response efforts in their countries and beyond to many outbreaks. They also served as a major cornerstone in rolling out rapid response capacity building in their respective countries to the sub-national level.