Are prison settings included in national preparedness plans?

Abstract

Abstract With the aim to explore the extent to which places of detention are considered in national preparedness planning in the WHO European Region, a desktop review was conducted and combined with responses to the Health in Prisons European Database (HIPED) survey from Member States referring to 2020. In both searches, the aim was to identify the existence of: 1) national pandemic preparedness plans written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic; and 2) national pandemic preparedness and response plans specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. Where prisons were included, all aspects of pandemic preparedness relating to prisons were extracted and collated as per the main domains of the WHO checklist for influenza pandemic preparedness plans. The desktop review found that 30 Member States had pandemic plans accessible online, but only seven included any mention of prisons. Responses to the HIPED survey suggested wide dissemination of a COVID-19 preparedness and/or response plan, but only six out of 36 Member States referred to prisons or the vulnerabilities of people living in places of detention. The combined findings suggest that prisons are rarely considered in national planning and that lessons from previous pandemics have not led to a change in recognizing that prisons are high-risk environments for pathogen transmission and that failing to consider them in national planning may lead to impacts that affect the wider community.