OIE training Focal Points for wildlife (Gaborone) Cycle II (French)

This second workshop was organized jointly with OIE and the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre (CCWHC), one of three OIE Collaborating Centers dealing with wild animals. Only African french-speaking participants attended this workshop and came from Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Dem. Rep.), Congo (Rep.), Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles and Togo.The training aimed at improving the reporting of wildlife diseases to the OIE, as required in the Terrestrial and Aquatic Animal Health Codes, so as to fulfil one of the objectives of the Organisation : to ensure transparency in the global animal disease situation, including zoonoses. To this end, the agenda of the workshop was organised as follows :

• (i) A group of presentations related to the OIE (general organization, OIE national focal points and their precise role, key information related to the notification to the OIE and the fact that it is compulsory for members States, overview of the terrestrial animal and aquatic animal health codes and manuals, OIE expertise focusing on the OIE world reference laboratory and collaborating centers).
• (ii) Nearly two days were allocated to the OIE Collaborating Centre for wildlife diseases. They were divided into two sections : methodologies with regard to general surveillance and with regard to targeted surveillance of wildlife diseases.
• (iii) Four working groups were formed. Case studies on general surveillance and targeted surveillance were presented to the groups. At the end of the day, these enabled focal points to acquire a better understanding of what they have to know, as well as the required know-how. A printed training manual and various electronic documents on PC, were made available to the participants from the onset of the seminar for the needs of the working group sessions. This greatly facilitated the discussion between the experts of the collaborating centre and the participants. The OIE national focal points for wildlife were also trained on the use of the online WAHIS-wild reporting system, the new component of WAHIS dedicated to wildlife diseases, the World Animal Health Information System, both in terms of proficiency in the use of the software and in reporting wildlife animal diseases.
• (iv) New developments in wildlife management and what can be done to improve wildlife diseases surveillance, focused on the African wildlife problems and provided options to improve the collection of sanitary data related to wildlife diseases through the surveillance networks.
• (v) To conclude the seminar, OIE wildlife activities, future prospects, agenda of forthcoming training workshops for OIE focal points for wildlife and recommendations of the World Conference on the wildlife held in Paris in February 2011 were presented.

A field visit was organised to the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, a few kilometres from the capital, which ended with the traditional “bush braai”

The assessment of the seminar by the participants indicates that the OIE support to national experts is regarded as both important and useful. The excellent organization and the welcome extended to the participants while in Botswana, made for a pleasant stay and enabled participants to be fully focused and committed to the seminar. Finally, the active participation and interactions between participants was particularly appreciated by the organizers and speakers at the seminars (Collaborating Centre and other experts) .