Dr Jean Jabbour, WHO Representative in Egypt, and Mr Masaki Noke, Ambassador of Japan to EgyptThe World Heath Organization welcomes a new contribution from the Government of Japan to support the scaling up of Egypt’s disease surveillance system, ensuring an effective and rapid response to epidemic-prone diseases across the country.
Within Egypt’s national action plans for the prevention and control of Ebola virus disease, pandemic influenza, avian influenza and dengue fever, the training of surveillance officers and rapid response teams is a high priority.
This contribution from Japan will enable WHO to build national capacity for disease outbreak investigation and rapid response, and improve the transportation of laboratory samples within Egypt and internationally, as needed.
Taking place over one year, from the third quarter of 2019 until the first quarter in 2020, the project will enable WHO to train more than 100 multidisciplinary health staff in 27 governorates, including public hospital staff. The Ministries of Health and Population, Agriculture and Environment will coordinate work within a one-health approach to implement the project. These include
“This partnership between WHO and Japan is a milestone in supporting public health programmes in Egypt and ensuring that the Egyptian population is protected against current and potential epidemic-prone diseases,” said Dr Jean Jabbour, WHO Representative in Egypt.
Mr Masaki Noke, Ambassador of Japan to Egypt, stated that ”It is our greatest pleasure, in collaborating with the WHO, to support capacity-building of staff to deal with infectious diseases in Egypt.” He added that “Improving the health care system through capacity-building is also important in the context of universal health coverage that will be one of the key themes of two summits in Japan, the G20 in June, and TICAD7 (Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development) in August, to which HE President El Sisi is invited.”
The project is being implemented as part of a larger regional project in the Eastern Mediterranean Region with the financial support from the Government of Japan amounting to approximately US$ 800 000.