Officials from health and agricultural ministries worldwide plan to attend a conference to marshal international co-operation against the advance of new infectious diseases in Ha Noi later this month.
Participants who will attend the three-day meeting, supported by the UN, will exchange their experience in responses to the pandemic A/H1N1 influenza and H5N1 avian influenza.
Viet Nam, the country with a strong record in fighting both A/H1N1 and H5N1, will host the April 19-21 conference, that will provide commitment and direction on tackling emerging disease threats both now and into the future.
According to Viet Nam’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Cao Duc Phat, the 2010 International Ministerial Conference on Animal and Pandemic Influenza (IMCAPI) will be “an important event that will allow us to consolidate the lessons learned from our efforts to control H5N1 and respond to H1N1.”
Organisers are counting on the ministerial conference to come up with enhanced co-operative measures for continuing to push back the extent of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza; improve systems to detect, assess and respond to existing and potential influenza pandemics; and address the root causes of disease emergence at the animal-human-ecosystem interface.
The conference is also being organised in coordination with the US and the EU.
Support is coming from key international agencies in animal and human health: the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Organisation for Animal Health, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organisation, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, together with the Office of the UN System Influenza Coordination.
IMCAPI is the seventh in a series of international ministerial conferences on animal and human influenza since 2005, and the first to take place since the 2009 pandemic.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News
