Cairo, Egypt - The Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Disease (ECTAD) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with General Organization for Veterinary Service (GOVS) and Animal Health Research institute (AHRI) have jointly organized implementing partners monthly coordination meeting in the conference hall of GOVS.

The meeting was attended by focal points and senior officers from the General Organization of Veterinary Services (GOVS), the Animal Health Research Institute (AHRI) and FAO involved in joint implementation of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV) and Africa Sustainable Livestock (ASL2050) projects.

The meeting enabled the three implementing parties to discuss the implementation status of activities as well as jointly develop plans for activities to be implemented until December 2020 under three USAID-funded projects coordinated through FAO’s ECTAD unit. In addition, the participants reflected and discussed on how to improve the key functions of the Veterinary Services such as surveillance, coordination between epidemiology units and diagnostic laboratories, response to HPAI, risk communication as well as vaccination and vaccines.

“Indeed, the nature of the main transboundary animal diseases justifies the need to adopt an integrated approach and build up on what have been achieved since the last 12 years, in order to share health information, develop collaborations between all actors and harmonize practices” Dr. Abdul Hakim Ali, Chairman of the General Organization for Veterinary Services, said.

The partners have also identified and discussed challenges encountered during implementation of HPAI, MERS-CoV and ASL2050 projects that aim to address emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases.

“Animal diseases, especially transboundary diseases have a major impact at the global level on public health, animal health, and livelihood of vulnerable people. That is why we are all convinced that the response to these diseases outbreaks must be fast, sufficiently coordinated and strategically planned in order to contain them before their spread,” Ali added

"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many activities and events related to ongoing projects that address zoonotic diseases have been postponed, and great reliance has been placed on remote meetings and virtual trainings. However, we need to gradually resume full-scale implementation of activities by complying with safety regulations as the Government of Egypt (GoE) has relaxed restrictions related to travels and meetings" said Dr. Zelalem Tadesse, FAO’s ECTAD Egypt Team Leader.

It’s worth noting that FAO has been supporting the Government of Egypt (GoE) since 2007 to understand, prevent and reduce the socio-economic and public health impacts of infectious zoonotic diseases at animal source. Through the USAID-funded Avian Influenza (AI) and Emerging Pandemic Threats phase-2 (EPT-2) programmes, FAO has been active in preventing and combating diseases that emerge from animals and spillover to humans through fostering multi-sectoral collaboration. These programmes have enabled the country to strengthen the capacity of animal health system to prevent, detect and respond to endemic, emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases, specifically highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV).