The proposed guidelines for a common structure for reports on health crises and critical health events are an attempt of capturing the experiences gained and a further step for promoting a standardized methodology for sharing results and experiences. Such a common and standardized approach will facilitate the analysis and comparison of findings in order to improve preparedness planning and response and advance international collaboration and learning. If future reporting follows common standards, then the documented findings would be comparable and could be used to learn and apply lessons within an individual field of activity and to apply those lessons learned also to other related preparedness activities. It could also facilitate the implementation of joint activities and joint reports involving different sectors.
