Good emergency management practices: a review of the core principles, with a focus on preparedness.

Animal health emergencies can also have serious socio-economic and public health consequences, including impacts on human health, as well as food security and safety. Therefore, policy-makers and advisers should take an active part in the development of emergency management systems. A formally structured animal health emergency management system sets out, in a systematic way, the elements required to achieve the necessary level of preparedness, and provides for planning and implementation of the appropriate actions to be taken in an emergency. Good emergency management practices, as laid down by the Emergency Management Centre for Animal Health (EMC-AH) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, should incorporate all four phases of an animal health event: peacetime (i.e. before the event occurs), alert, emergency and reconstruction. Five actions are implemented before, during and after an animal health event: prepare, prevent, detect, respond and recover. A strategic action plan can be drafted to schedule the activities required to develop the emergency management system and increase a country's level of preparedness, step by step. The EMC-AH aims to support all components of emergency management at the national, regional and international levels along this progressive pathway for emergency preparedness.