Cairo, Egypt - Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Disease (ECTAD) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-Egypt) has organized the first meeting in 2021 for the One Health Technical Advisory Group (OH_TAG) to address a shared health concern together, with the ultimate goal of achieving optimal health outcomes for both people and animals and to discuss the key challenges that impede efforts for addressing priority zoonotic diseases (PZDs) and AMR in Egypt.

The main topics discussed during the meeting included COVID-19, Avian Influenza and other endemic diseases.

“The main objective of the meeting is to strengthen collaboration among OH practitioners for addressing priority zoonotic diseases (PZDs) and AMR through facilitating information exchange on epidemiology as well as ongoing efforts to address PZDs including COVID-19 and AMR in the animal, human and environmental health sectors”, said Ahmed Saad representing FAO ECTAD Egypt team.

A total of 40 participants attended the meeting representing the General Organization for Veterinary Services (GOVS), National Laboratory for Quality Control of Poultry Production (NLQP), Animal Health Research Institute (AHRI), Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP), Ministry of Environment (MOE), Veterinary faculty of Cairo University, WHO and FAO.

The foundation of a One Health approach is collaboration, communication, and coordination across all relevant sectors and disciplines to address a shared health concern together, with the ultimate goal of achieving optimal health outcomes for both people and animals.

Egypt to launch a Central Hub for effective response to health crisis

“Egypt will launch soon a “Central Hub”, using all available capabilities, to take decisions related to health conditions to ensure the existence of a mechanism for swift action during crisis”, said Mohamed Abdel Fattah, head of the Central Administration for Preventive Medicine Affairs at MOHP during his opening remarks.

“There is good and continuous coordination with many bodies responsible for human and animal health under One Health approach umbrella to exchange information and experiences to deal with priority zoonotic diseases (PZDs) and AMR in Egypt, and to get acquainted with the most important developments related to them”. Mohammed Atea undersecretary of Preventive Medicine of GOVS explained.

The meeting enabled to discuss and share information on the current situation of COVID-19 globally, regionally and at national level including plans for studies of corona viruses in animals. In addition, the meeting discussed the global update on H5N8 situation, national updates on influenza surveillance activities in humans, poultry and wild birds.

“The current procedures and efforts have proven its ability to deal with Covid 19 crisis, and new mechanisms have been developed to conduct PCR tests and obtain results in short periods of time”, said Samah Eid Abdel Salam, Deputy of the Institute of Animal Health. On his part, the representative of MOE, Ayman Hamada emphasized the ministry's role as a major part of the efforts made to address the challenges facing the environment that lead to the emergence of other diseases and disasters that affect public health.

The meeting also followed up on the results and recommendations of joint risk assessment (JRA) for HPAI and Brucellosis as well as discussed oncurrent structure of EOC (Emergency Operation Center), plans for establishing OH- working group for Rabies and AMR, and FAO’s guideline for GOVID -19 joint outbreak investigation.

Moreover, FAO’s planned activities to strengthen multi-sectoral collaboration were presented, discussed and endorsed by the meeting.

The One Health Technical Advisory Group (OH_TAG) was established in 2017 to facilitate the collaboration among sectors and serve as a platform for sharing information and best practices on current and new events of zoonotic diseases as well as identify joint/multi-sectoral actions that aim to detect and mitigate the risk of zoonotic diseases and AMR.

It is worth noting that ECTAD programs and activities in Egypt are funded by The United States Agency for International Development (USAID).