When Medical Emergencies Erase Borders has kicked off its development with a meeting that involved all the healthcare services from the Pyrenees as well as the AMT (Transpyrenean Medical Association), a cross-border association of Orders of Doctors of Spain and France.

“We want to show the development of our project to the Orders of Doctors so we can take a giant leap in cross-border cooperation on health”, stated Jean-Louis Valls, director of the Working Community of the Pyrenees (CTP), who’s leading the project. Most of the remaining obstacles for European cooperation stem from diverging national legislations and incompatible administrative processes, according to the assessment “Cross-Border Review” published by DG REGIO on 2017.

This is precisely the kind of problem that When Medical Emergencies Erase Borders tackles, for its aim is to achieve collaboration agreements among the French State, the Spanish Autonomous Communities and the Principality of Andorra that allow the signature of a convention that enables cross-border emergency health intervention.

A first draft for a bilateral agreement among health organizations in Spain and France was written during the second meeting of the project in November. During this meeting, the AMT agreed to collaborate and draft a bilateral accord between Orders of Doctors from the French Departments and the Spanish Provinces.

The quality of life of the 23 million Pyrenean citizens could be significantly improved by ensuring that any healthcare professional could give them emergency assistance. But, alas, it’s not currently authorized that these professionals intervene anywhere except on the territory in which they obtained their diploma. As stated by the representatives of the different Pyrenean healthcare services, “patients should come before anything else, no matter where’s the closest doctor”.

When Medical Emergencies Erase Borders is the only B-Solutions project that works in the Pyrenees, promoted by the DG REGIO of the European Commission and managed by the Association of European Border Regions.