Brief
Points of entry are where regional outbreaks are most often imported and where IHR core capacities are most visibly tested. This SOP set harmonises the practical work of border health across the MPA countries: how travellers are screened, how suspected cases are isolated and referred, how public-health data are captured at the crossing, and how neighbouring countries share signals in near-real time. The procedures are written for the officer at the crossing, not the planner in the capital — each is a checklist with clear decision points, escalation triggers and the exact fields to record in the Version 2 Digital POE system. The guidance covers ground crossings, seaports and international airports, and includes annexes for cross-border simulation exercises, points-of-entry designation and the minimum equipment list. Adopting one regional SOP means an officer trained in Zambia can work a crossing in Namibia, signals are comparable across borders, and the digital system receives clean, standard data everywhere it is deployed.
Why harmonise
Cross-border corridors do not respect national SOP differences. A single regional standard makes signals comparable, training portable, and digital data clean across every crossing.
Screening & referral flow
The core flow — observe, screen, isolate, refer, record, notify — is expressed as a one-page decision checklist with explicit escalation triggers for the border-health officer.
Digital data capture
Every step maps to a field in the Version 2 Digital POE system so that the record created at the crossing is the record the surveillance team analyses, with no re-keying.
Cross-border coordination
Annexes define the joint-notification protocol and the simulation-exercise template used for corridors such as Sirali–Isebania and Zambia–Namibia.
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