Inception Meeting
Strengthening Capacity for Tanzania National One Health Early Detection of and Response to Infectious Disease Epidemics and AMR (OneHealthDetect-TZ)
WHAT: Lessons learnt from the past outbreaks have demonstrated that the weaknesses of the health delivery systems (including governance, infrastructure, surveillance, diagnostic capacity and case management) have largely contributed to late detection and response as well as other difficulties associated with outbreaks control. The COVID-19 pandemic, the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in West Africa, the widespread antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the relative high burden of communicable diseases in Africa, have emphasised the necessity for having, in situ in Africa, well-coordinated national action plans for health security, regional and continental coordination. For efficiency, all should be supported by relevant One Health expertise for disease surveillance and pathogen detection/identification especially at the human, animal and environment interface. SACIDS Foundation for One Health (SACIDS) was set up in 2008 to develop such capability and SACIDS Member Institutions[1] have provided expertise to support national COVID-19 response.
At the official level, the Tanzania government has been progressively strengthening its capacity for the national health security agenda, national action plans for health security and for AMR and for One Health coordination. Tanzania has developed several policy guidelines/plans using a One Health approach. They include: (i) the National One Health Strategic Plan, 2015 and All-Hazards Public Health Emergency Response Plan. In 2016 Tanzania was the first country globally to volunteer to subject itself to the Joint External Evaluation coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Soon after, Tanzania also participated in the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Performance of Veterinary Services PVS) and Gap Analysis. This led to the development of the Tanzania National Action Plan for Health Security in 2017 and the National Action Plan on AMR in 2017, through an inter-sectoral collaboration and under the authority of the Prime Minister’s Office. During 2018/2019, Tanzania set up the National One Health Platform in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). This happened after a 5-year evolution process that involved extensive engagement with a wide selection of national and external experts and institutions as well as through the results from various Technical Working Groups, as summarised in Fig. 1, published by Kitua, A.Y., Scribner, S., Rasmuson, M. et al. Building a functional national One Health platform: the case of Tanzania. One Health Outlook 1, 3 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42522-019-0003-0. Meanwhile at the Africa continental level, the African Union set up the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) in 2017.
Our overarching goal is to enhance multisectoral collaboration for early disease outbreak detection and response in humans and animals[1] in Tanzania. By pioneering the founding blocks for an outbreak intelligence hub to receive, interpret, and visualize EBS data from multiple sources across multiple sectors related to public health. Such data/information will feed into shared One Health Epidemiological Operating Center (OHEOC) and inform the response teams on what, where, when and how to focus efforts. To achieve this, it is imperative that stakeholder health Information Technology (IT) systems are inter-operable, making the right data available to the right people (authorized) at the right time across stakeholders in a way that can be relied upon and meaningfully used by recipients.
Specific Objectives
- To strengthen Event Based Surveillance systems and anti-microbial use and resistance (AMU and AMR) for public health, animal health and environment sector ministries
- To develop a National One Health sharing dashboard and/or platform to assist in coordinating and/or sharing health events within sectoral ministries
WHEN: 24 February 2022
WHERE: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
