Project Name: Alerting, Surveillance and Reporting System for Pharma III (ASHT III)

Project start date: 4. 6. 2012
Project completion date: 1. 12. 2014
Budget for VFN: EUR 71 180 (60% funded by the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers - EAHC)
Project guarantor (workplace): Department of Occupational Medicine VFN in Prague

Project brief:

The project builds on the previous two ASHT I and II projects - Alerting System for Chemical Health Threats, which were designed to improve chemical contingency preparedness, as there is still no single protocol for chemical accident warnings in Europe. Toxicologists from 6 countries participate in the project in collaboration with the European Association of Poison Centers and Clinical Toxicologists (EAPCCT).

In the first phase - ASHT I - the RAS-CHEM - Rapid Alert System for Chemical Incidents was developed, which includes exemplary exposure scenarios typical of chemical abuse.

In the ASHT II, an overview of clinical intoxication syndromes was developed, which was extended by the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), allowing for multilingual translation. Also the first variant of the electronic warning system with continuous monitoring of selected cases of intoxication cases registered at toxicological information centers was tested.

ASHT III has a number of goals - one of them is the creation and subsequent critical evaluation of standardized health care protocols in case of chemical accidents affecting the health of the population (CEMM sheets - Chemical Casualty Medical Management). The Work-package (WP) 4, which is responsible for creating the sheets, is led by the Toxicological Information Center of the General Teaching Hospital in Prague. These sheets are a summary of physicochemical and toxicological data on important chemical substances whose toxic effects may exceed national boundaries in accidents. All sheets will include first aid data, diagnostic criteria, clinical intoxication syndromes depending on the route of entry of the substance into the body, procedures for decontamination, concentration limits for environmental monitoring and rescue, evacuation distances, and treatment measures in health facilities including antidote indications. WP 2 ensures that professionals and the general public are informed about the activities of this project, WP 5 compatibility with the European directives 2009/128 / EC and 1998/8 / EC, WP 6 assesses the necessity of monitoring monitored data by European toxicological experts. A WP 7 monitoring and collection system for toxicological data from European Poison Centers will be expanded and deployed in parallel. The ultimate goal is to extend the warning system to all EU Member States, which will be supported by cooperation with EAPCCT and the World Health Organization (WHO). The project is coordinated by WP 1, its ongoing evaluation of WP 3.

The project partners are: Health Protection Agency (principal investigator and coordinator), UK; Universitätsmedizin Göttingen Giz - Nord Poisons Center, Germany; Center Hospitalier Universitaire de Lille, France; Health Emergency Situations Center over Poisons Control Center, Lithuania; Norwegian Poisons Information Center, Norway; National Institute of Health, Italy.

Information leaflet.