FAO in Egypt

Advancing the One Health Agenda in Egypt: A Success Story

In 2011, ECTAD laid the foundation of establishing the first One Health (OH) collaboration in Egypt by founding the 4-Way Linking Initiative (4WL). Through this initiative, FAO, World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH, previously named OIE), and World Health Organization (WHO) brought together the epidemiology and laboratory components of the human and animal health sectors from the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MoALR), and Ministry of Environment (MoE).

Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) - Egypt

Taking the opportunity of hosting COP27 in Egypt, a National One Health Strategic Framework 2022-2026 was developed and presented for endorsement at a higher level. The framework aims to institutionalize the one-health approach to reduce the health risks facing humans, animals, and the environment by maximizing the capacities of the nation’s health systems.

The 4WL facilitated sharing information, performing joint rapid risk assessment (JRA) of HPAI, and providing recommendations to the HPAI ministerial committee.

In 2013, the 4WL expanded and transformed into the OH Technical Advisory Group (OH-TAG) by facilitating collaborative work and coordination meetings among health practitioners from GOVS-MoALR, MoH, and MoE to address HPAI and other emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases. In this regard, ECTAD supported seven coordination meetings of the OH-TAG from 2013- 2020 involving a total of 588 OH practitioners. Those meetings resulted in facilitating and sustaining the data sharing and the joint conduct of situational assessments, establishing a task group responsible for JRA, and joint outbreak investigation in emergency cases.