National health preparedness plan

The national health preparedness plan is a national framework for the health sector’s preparedness. The plan describes the legislative and planning basis, the entities involved in the health and care preparedness, their roles, responsibilities, tasks and resources in prevention, preparedness planning and crises and disasters.

Entities discussed in the plan must use this plan as a basis when making their own preparedness plans for crisis management. The entities must regularly evaluate and update their preparedness plans. Lessons learned from drills and incidents should be incorporated in the plans through systematic improvement work.

Clear notification and reporting routines and sound cooperation between the entities during crises are particularly important, and are therefore discussed at length in this plan.

The plan is based on the established principles for the preparedness work in Norway, including responsibility, subsidiarity, equivalency and cooperation, and does not introduce changed preconditions or responsibilities.

Experience shows that many crises and disasters are often international in scope. Good crisis management thus requires sound preparedness cooperation with other countries and international organisations. The Norwegian health authorities’ cooperation with international entities is also discussed in the plan.

The Ministry of Health and Care Services adopted the first version of the Comprehensive national health and social preparedness plan on 31 January 2007, as a step in the follow-up of Storting White Paper No. 37 (2004-2005) on the tsunami disaster in Southern Asia and central crisis management.

This is the second edition of the plan, version 2.0.

Read the National health preparedness plan in pdf

Read the National health preparedness plan in ePub for tablets