Zambia is one of the three countries that have been selected for piloting the 3rd edition of the Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) for the WHO African Region. In order to conduct the pilot testing exercise, the WHO Regional Office for Africa has convened a five days meeting in Livingstone City which has brought together experts from the Ministry of Health, Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI), Africa Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (Africa CDC), United States Centres for Disease Prevention and Control ( US CDC), WHO Country Office and other partners to review and provide inputs to the final draft of the document and to propose broad areas for consideration for adaptation at country level. This is intended to ensure that the guidelines are comprehensive and appropriate for addressing the current national and global surveillance goal of enhancing public health security.

This meeting has provided a forum for WHO to introduce the revised guidelines, to engage the country to develop a shared understanding of the guidelines including the updated tools. It will also enable WHO to obtain specific feedback on the clarity, value added and gaps as well as suggested enhancements that could be made to the final version and to identify what is needed to harmonize the document with existing national policies, structure and procedures for public health surveillance, outbreak preparedness, investigation and response.

For more information please visit https://www.afro.who.int