NAN-H-70
Meeting
By Vivian Ihechu
Lagos, Oct. 27, 2016 (NAN) No fewer than 200 policymakers and public health experts from West Africa and around the world will converge on Dakar, Senegal, to address emerging health threats using the “One Health’’ approach.
“One Health’’ is a way of designing health systems and services that looks at the health of humans, animals and their environments collectively.
The facilitators of the event said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos that the meeting would hold from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11.
The statement explained that an estimated 75 per cent of infectious diseases that have emerged over the past decade had been caused by pathogens that spread to people from animals or animal products.
“Trends like globalisation, urbanisation and climate change make it easy for these zoonotic diseases to transfer to humans and spread quickly around the world.
“The recent Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa is a prime example of this.
“A single case of the virus in a remote village, likely contracted through an infected animal, ultimately spread between more than 28,000 people.
“The spread also reached urban capital cities of six West African countries, namely Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.’’
According to the statement, West Africa currently faces outbreaks of other zoonotic diseases such as avian influenza in poultry in Nigeria and Rift Valley Fever in Niger.
It said that other public health threats included the appearance of Zika virus in Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau.
At the upcoming West African Regional Conference on One Health, regional and global leaders will discuss strategies for predicting, preventing, detecting and responding to emerging health threats across the region.
This will be done by collectively addressing the health of people, animals and the environment.
“Ministers responsible for human health, animal health and wildlife from 17 West African countries will participate.
“The event will constitute of technical meetings involving health officials and technical personnel; they will focus on next steps for integrating One Health approaches into existing regional and country-level systems and programmes.
“At the Ministerial Meeting on the last day, attending ministers for human health, animal health and wildlife will put forth a communiqué to guide future action for the West African sub-region,’’ it said.
The event will be hosted by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission.
Other hosts include the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), Regional Animal Health Center (RAHC), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank and U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (NAN)
VIV/PDE
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(Edited by Peter Ejiofor)