National IHR-PVS Bridging Workshop Took Place

The Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, World Organization for Animal Health and World Health Organization conducted a three day workshop on National IHR-PVS Bridging in Adama starting from May 29, 2018.
Aschalew Abayneh advisor of the Minister of Health in his opening speech explained that understanding the benefit of multi-sectoral collaboration under the umbrella of One Health, MoH has been working actively to create strong relationships with other Ministries like Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and to operationalize One Health approach, MoH has officially nominated its technical staff to represent the Ministry in the One Health steering committee established a year ago which is composed of key government sectors: MoH, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change, and Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Ethiopian Wild life Conservation Authority) and other relevant stakeholders and organizations.
“Finally, I would like to thank the organizers, initiators and guests from WHO, OIE and AU participants, besides I would like to express my concern that your active participation and commitment in this regard is vital to meet the workshop expectations,” added Aschalew.
Understanding of the concept of One Health, its history, its frameworks and its benefits; understanding that a lot of areas for discussion and possible improvements do exist and can be operational – not only conceptual; level of collaboration between the two sectors for 16 key technical areas; identifying collaboration gaps between each disease; etc. were the outcomes of the workshop.
More than 50 participants drawn from regional health and agriculture bureaus, FAO, CDC and WHO have attended the workshop.