Public health england - centre for radiation, chemical and environmental hazards (PHE-CRCE) external expert experience in the joint external evaluation (JEE) mission for the radiation emergencies technical area

From August 2016 to June 2017, the Public Health England - Centre for Radiation Chemical and Environmental Hazards (PHE-CRCE), collaborating centre of the WHO, through its Radiation Hazards and Emergencies Department Emergency Response Group has successfully supported five WHO Joint External Evaluation (JEE) missions in the Eastern Mediterranean (Jordan, Bahrain and Tunisia) and African (Kenya, Mali) regions. The JEE tool is the main document used by both internal and external expert teams as a shared methodology to assess a country's capability in term of preparedness and response to public health threats under the International Health Regulation. This is done by evaluating different indicators. 'Radiation emergencies' is one of the 19 technical fields evaluated by the JEE tool and is composed of two indicators. Each indicator is scored on a 1-5 scale, 1 being the lowest (no capability) and 5 being the highest (sustainable capability). These five countries assessed by radiation experts from PHE, for their preparedness towards radio-nuclear emergencies, were scored between 1 and 3 against the JEE tool, with sometimes similarities in the gaps identified. Points of progress and course of actions were decided for each country. (authors)