Annual Influenza Surveillance Meeting strengthens collaboration at the animal human interface

For the third year in a row Uzbekistan held a series of Annual National Influenza Surveillance meetings, attended by around 50 participants from all over the country. These meetings were organized under the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework.

The Annual Influenza Meeting on 7 December in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, brought together

• epidemiologists and virologists working on influenza surveillance from all of Uzbekistan’s 14 provinces;
• clinicians dealing with the treatment of patients with severe symptoms; and
• representatives from the agricultural sector working on avian influenza surveillance and response.

The aim of the meeting was to discuss technical and operational issues related to influenza surveillance and to review progress in implementing influenza sentinel surveillance. A number of topics for this meeting derived from the work prioritized during the 2015 Annual National Influenza Surveillance Meeting.

One of the important outcomes of this meeting was that representatives from the agricultural sector provided their input and expressed their willingness to collaborate in a coming revision of the influenza pandemic plan.

Following tradition, WHO gave each participant a WHO mug as a New Year gift.