Focus of the OIE Collaborating Centre

The objectives of the Collaborating Centre are the following:

• Quality livelihoods
• Optimal animal health and production
• Rural development
• Ecosystem health
• Biodiversity
• Food security
• Sustainability.

These objectives will be realised by developing and offering training programmes in the health, management and production and of livestock and wildlife with special emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. The training will follow an integrated approach linking animal and human health, zoonoses, emerging and re-emerging diseases, marketing and trade of animal commodities and their products, conservation and environmental health, disease vectors, food safety and welfare.

The information used for the training will be partly based on the material currently used in the successful web-based Masters programme in Veterinary Tropical Diseases that is organized jointly by the DVTD and ITM’s Animal Health Department. This training material will be re-packaged in appropriate formats to support –undergraduate and postgraduate training as well as Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

To improve access to important veterinary information, the training material will be presented on an interactive electronic delivery platform, which will include blogs, interactive course material, videos, quizzes and discussion forums. The information will be presented at an introductory and more detailed expert level. Where accreditation for CPD is required (implying involvement of subject experts in evaluating quizzes and rewarding credit points), users will register online and pay a fee.

To support animal health management, up-to-date synthesized information on outbreaks of specific high-impact diseases or important research development will be provided and made accessible to field personnel in the form of quarterly or 4-monthly electronic bulletins. The first bulletin on Foot-and-mouth disease is currently in operation.

The electronic platform is currently being developed and it is envisaged that it will be launched in 2012.