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reduce risk and miigate the impact of disease outbreaks. Laboratory capacity needs to be established in all countries for the diagnosis of potenial emerging diseases. This
involves ensuring that internal quality control IQC and external quality assurance EQA are in place. In addiion, links with reference laboratories will further enhance
the capacity of public health laboratories and help with ideniicaion of unusual or new pathogens.
Support should be given to strengthen or establish links between public health laboratories and other laboratories that may need to be involved in surveillance,
risk assessment and response aciviies, including clinical, veterinary and research laboratories. It is also important to strengthen laboratory capaciies at the local level
to support early detecion of disease events and more rouine surveillance aciviies. There is a need to provide incenives to recruit and retain skilled laboratory staf at
the local level e.g. provincial and district levels.
Because laboratory capacity varies within and between countries—and experience in dealing with diferent infecious agents is similarly uneven—naional, regional and
global laboratory networks are vital to support public health surveillance and responses. Laboratory networking between local and naional reference laboratories needs to
be strengthened and coordinaion among public health, clinical, food, veterinary and other laboratories ensured. Links should also be established with regional and global
reference laboratories that provide highly specialized services. For example, chemical analysis and toxicology are unavailable or unobtainable in many countries. There is
also a need to advocate for the formulaion of policies and agreed procedures to facilitate seamless sharing of samples, reagents, training materials, guidelines and
the experiences of laboratory management between naional and regional reference laboratories.
Safe laboratory environments and safe pracices are required to avoid staf members and other people from becoming infected by the hazardous agents they are handling
or if there is an accidental release of the agent. Laboratory biosafety is best addressed by strengthening programmes through policy development, promoion of best
pracices through training and quality improvement aciviies, and ensuring that levels of biosecurity applied to every laboratory are matched to levels of assessed risk
i.e. according to the agent handled.
3.2.2 Strategic actions
• Strengthen accurate laboratory diagnosic capacity for priority emerging diseases through naional IQC and EQA.
• Strengthen laboratory support and paricipaion in emerging diseases or public health event surveillance, risk assessment and response systems.
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STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR WHO TECHNICAL AND COUNTRY WORK:
GeTTInG THe RIGHT foCUs
• Ensure efecive laboratory referral systems through strengthening naional, regional and internaional laboratory networking and coordinaion with other
laboratory services such as animal and food laboratories and highly specialized laboratory services.
• Strengthen laboratory biosafety aciviies to ensure diagnoses of emerging diseases are conducted in safe environments.
3.3 Zoonoses
Zoonoic diseases i.e. zoonoses are described as diseases or infecions that are naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans and vice versa. Recent evidence has
shown that approximately 60 of all human diseases currently recognized and about 75 of emerging diseases that have afected humans over the last three decades
have originated from animals. Prevenion, detecion and control of zoonoic diseases are therefore essenial components of any naional emerging diseases programme.
Regionally and globally, the importance of zoonoic diseases has been recognized with the Food and Agriculture Organizaion of the United Naions FAO, the World
Organisaion for Animal Health OIE, and WHO working in collaboraion with each other and with other partners to contribute to the concept of “One Health”.
Strengthening generic capacity in naional surveillance, risk assessment and response systems, as well as other APSED focus areas such as risk communicaions and laboratory
services, will help to ensure early recogniion of, rapid response to, and prevenion and control of zoonoic diseases.
Given the unique nature of zoonoic diseases, ensuring sustainable and efecive coordinaion and collaboraion mechanisms between the human and animal health
sectors is vitally important and needs to be further strengthened. In addiion, reducing the risk of transmission of zoonoic diseases from animals to humans oten requires
close collaboraion and links with the food safety, environment and wildlife sectors. Experiences and lessons learned from avian inluenza A H5N1 in the region over the
past few years provide a good foundaion to consolidate and strengthen naional and regional coordinaion mechanisms for surveillance informaion-sharing and coordinated
responses by human and animal heath sectors.
3.3.1 Key components
The key components of zoonoses coordinaion and collaboraion are: • sharing of surveillance informaion;
• coordinated response; • risk reducion; and
• research.
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Timely sharing of data collected through human health, animal health and food safety surveillance networks is criical to facilitate early reporing of zoonoses of public
health importance. Coordinaion between human health, animal health, wildlife and other sectors will facilitate rapid epidemiological invesigaion and risk assessment of
events and implementaion of any required control measures. Advocacy is required to explore ways to consolidate, improve and sustain such coordinaion and collaboraion
mechanisms.
Reducing the risk of disease transmission at the human–animal interface is key to zoonoses prevenion. In the past, it has occasionally been necessary to apply urgent
intervenions in a somewhat ad hoc manner because good evidence on risk-reducion measures was unavailable. A greater efort is therefore required to further idenify
and implement evidence-based measures to reduce the risk of animal-to-human transmission in a more sustainable way.
This will require collaboraive research on zoonoic diseases in order to provide evidence for intervenion and policy formulaion. Strengthening operaional research aciviies
will require investment by both the animal and human health sectors.
Figure 3.2 Zoonoses coordination mechanism
