On 11 December the European Commission announced that it will fund Hesculaep, a project for the coordination of activities of prevention and crisis management in situations of medical emergency. Approximately 100 million cases of medical emergency are registered in the Union each year. The infrastructures and facilities to react to these events vary considerably from one country to the next. Moreover, the concerns linked to bioterrorism and new diseases underline the need for Europe to tackle these threats on a transnational level. The Hesculaep project (a series of regional and national programmes of medical emergency aimed at better coordination in pre-hospital treatment) will contribute to the networking of national research programmes and be financed in the context of the Net-Era plan, as part of the sixth framework programme. Thanks to comparative analysis between national programmes, participants in the project will be enabled to identify suitable areas for future cooperation in the field of research. Better cooperation will permit citizens to benefit from the same level of medical emergency treatment throughout the EU.
