FAO upgrades animal health monitoring system




The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) upgraded its global information system to monitor animal disease and outbreaks. The new EMPRES-i+ aims to improve intelligence, forecasting and early warning to enable countries to watch disease spread and avoid further episodes. It replaces an earlier version, EMPRES-i, first launched in 2004 and has been widely used by hundreds of stakeholders ranging from local communities to global development
The latest web-based system will better support countries in identifying and mitigating serious animal disease threats as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the challenges and importance of early warning.
FAO regards animal health as critical to food and nutrition security, especially those related to improving production, eradicating poverty, ending hunger, and ensuring healthy lives.
We need to prioritise and strengthen the animal health sector, said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu.
He added that robust international and national animal health systems are essential to prevent diseases, ensure safe and nutritious food, and protect farmers' interests.
Furthermore, today's globalised and hyper-connected world allows the rapid spread of diseases across borders. In this context, FAO said disease intelligence systems need to be far more efficient at capturing big data, far more sensitive to detect unusual events, and rapidly sharing information. (Image from Unsplash)

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