Ministers of health, agriculture and wildlife have renewed their commitment to working together to prevent and respond early to public health threats across West Africa.
This was made known last Friday at the landmark West African Regional Conference on One Health held in Dakar, Senegal.
The collaboration comes as the region approaches the three-year mark since the first Ebola case in the recent outbreak.
According to the World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, “Disease outbreaks and public health crises – many of which began in animals – have taken lives and livelihoods, severely impacted our industries and economies, and taken a serious toll on our already-stretched public health workforces
“With so much at stake, the world simply cannot afford to take a crisis-by-crisis approach to health security. Strong systems and coordinated efforts are needed – both within and between countries – to detect, report and control the spread of diseases that affect animals and humans.”
The communiqué signed by ministers will help bolster the regional coordination and strong systems that are needed to help prevent and stop disease outbreaks. The agreement also announced the creation of framework that will help countries work together across sectors and borders to ensure effective integration of human, animal and environmental health efforts.
Ultimately, it hopes to provide the basis for countries in West Africa to conduct joint preparedness and response planning at the country and sub-regional levels, which will help manage outbreaks before they become national and international crises.
Specifically, Member States party to the agreement have pledged to carry out national risk assessments and set up alert mechanisms for both common and emerging disease outbreaks within their territories. Governments will be tasked with integrating laboratories for human and animal samples to improve the timely diagnosis of diseases and track the spread of drug-resistant pathogens at the national level-a crucial step in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Together, these commitments will generate renewed momentum for West African countries to prioritise health security and pandemic preparedness. Ultimately, this will help drive progress towards existing commitments and initiatives, such as WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), a legal tool that helps to ensure countries are better equipped to prevent, report and respond to public health risks that could cross borders and threaten people worldwide.
One Health is an approach that calls on policymakers and health practitioners to consider the inextricable link between human, animal and environmental health when designing public health systems, research and programmes.
The conference , hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, in collaboration with other regional and international partners – is the strongest political commitment to One Health in West Africa to date.
