Avian Influenza... What’s next?

After four years of fighting for the control of avian influenza in our regions of West and Central Africa, it is clear that our efforts appear to have paid off: Since 2008, no outbreak of avian flu has been reported! We must, of course, remain lucid and humble: These results are provided by the successful combination of national efforts, technical and financial support from partners and from FAO in particular, but also by specificities of the poultry value chains, the geography and the climate of the region. Vigilance is therefore required: Although we are no longer in “times of war”, the disease is far from being eliminated, as evidenced by recurrent outbreaks in Egypt or in Southeast Asia…

However, we all found that world opinion and the community of donors give less importance to this issue and the page turns ... What future for the CRSA of Bamako and our FAO ECTAD unit? The mandate of the regional ECTAD is clear: the whole issue of Animal Health, or priority transboundary disease affecting production, and animal diseases affecting public health (including zoonoses) are to be considered.
We have, for some time, addressed queries related to these priority diseases but today, the circumstances, the member countries of the Networks and the technical and financial partners invite us to embrace the full breadth of our mission...
To meet this need, the FAO ECTAD unit has developed a programme that synthesize the various national requests, the existing Networks (RESOLAB, RESEPI, RESOCOM and RESECOP) and the international strategies proposed by the institutions of reference (OIE, FAO and WHO) such as "One Health".
The action programme, that we invite you to discover, reflects three major concerns:
1. To respond concretely and realistically to the national or regional requests,
2. To follow a comprehensive strategy by promoting synergy among partners and a global approach to address the issues,
3. To build on existing Networks and their anchors in Regional Economic Communities (RECs) that will take more and more initiatives in the surveillance and control of priority diseases.
The implementation of this action program obviously depends on funding that we could get from technical and financial partners.
I invite you to support our efforts to sustain dynamic and lively networks and to enhance surveillance, diagnostic monitoring, and control of priority disease by seeking financial contributions from our partners and underlining the cross border and cross cutting aspects of Animal Health and production in our area.