On November 19, 2009, the kick-off meeting for the Euregio-project "EurSafety Health-net" has taken place. EurSafety Health-net is the follow-up of EUREGIO MRSA-net, that, according to the Robert Koch Institute, gained some sort of model character all over the nation when talking about prevention of hospital acquired MRSA infection. Besides the protection against infection, the main goal of this new project is to strengthen the patients' safety on both sides of the border.
For the next five years the project will be funded with 8.1 million € by the INTERREG IV AProgram "Germany - Netherlands". Up to 6 Million € will be financed by the European fonds for Regional Development (EFRE) of the European Union, as well as by the Ministries for Economics of the German Federal States Nordrhein-Westfalen and Niedersachsen and the Dutch provinces Overijssel, Gelderland and Limburg. In Germany, the Institute for Hygiene of the University of Münster is the project leader, in the Netherlands the Institute of Behavioural Science of the University of Twente.
The Dutch/German collaboration should strengthen the protection against infection dangers such as hospital germs, diarrhea as well as the new influenza. In early October a first project activity concerning improvement of the hygiene of hands already started in schools of the region Wesel (D) and Nijmegen (NL) (http://www.stopschmuddelfritze.de). Pupils should be sensibilised for hygiene, in order to reduce the danger of an uncontrollable outburst of the new H1N1 influenza in schools. In addition to this project, public health authorities and hospitals should synchronize the treatment of influenza patients along the border. In addition to the protection against influenza, it is a main goal of the project to fight the infection that patients are exposed to during their treatment. This especially means the protection against hospital germs with antibiotic resistance like MRSA. In Germany, the infection with MRSA is up to 20 times higher than in the Netherlands. Therefore, solutions like the already established www.mrsa-net.nl (University of Twente) should be further developed.
All these goals should be attained within the next 5 years by establishing a Euro-regional trust of quality with as much participants from the public health sector as possible (patients, hospitals, medical practices, public health offices, laboratories, cost units and others). A close collaboration with participants of the project "euPrevent MRSA" established in the region Maas-Rhein guarantees a very good professional exchange in contents matters along the whole German/Dutch/Belgian border. Meeting the same comparable quality standards should help hospitals, medical practices, rehabilitation clinics, and nursing homes on both sides of the border to document their successful additional effort in fighting the dreaded hospital germs. In addition, the project partners will deploy their combined know-how to establish a cross-border early-warning system for especially dangerous germs. In order to make this possible, the successful concept of these regional networks should be strengthened by the public health offices. The cross border exchange of experiences should as well improve the regional networks.