Rasheed Ahmed
Islamabad: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) supported the Government of Pakistan with the development of their National One Health Framework and Strategic Plan Development Workshop July 16-20. The workshop focused on zoonotic diseases of national and international significance, which are diseases that can be spread between humans and animals, such as rabies and brucellosis.
Pakistan recently established a One Health Hub in the Pakistan National Institute of Health (NIH), which will support collaboration and coordination between the human, animal, and environment health sectors on infectious zoonotic diseases. This workshop was organized in response to a request from the Pakistani government for technical assistance in developing a One Health Strategic Plan to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks in Pakistan.
In addition, CDC and USDA experts discussed strategies to control rabies and brucellosis, which the Pakistani government prioritized as part of the One Health Zoonotic Disease Prioritization and One Health Systems Mapping and Analysis Toolkit (OH-SMART™) workshop held in August 2017.
The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (MoNHSRC), the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MoNFSR), the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), and the Provincial, Gilgit-Baltistan, ICT and AJK Health, Livestock, and Environment Departments and Ministries participated.
