Ensuring good governance to address emerging and re-emerging animal disease threats: supporting the veterinary services of developing countries to meet OIE international standards on quality.

As an effect of increased globalisation, animal diseases, in particular those transmissible to man, have an immediate global economic and social impact. This fact, dramatically illustrated by the current avian influenza epizootic in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe, clearly demonstrates the crucial importance of the national Veterinary Services (VS) for the prevention, early detection and response for the efficient control of animal diseases. Complying with this mission for the VS presupposes the existence of appropriate governance and legislation and of an official system to control their quality and reliability- an obvious weakness in many developing and in transition countries. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has therefore developed a project aiming at strengthening the VS in those countries facing the greatest animal health threats and to bring them into line with OIE international standards already adopted by the same countries. Based on the evaluation of the VS and subsequent actions at the global, regional and national levels, the project will have a significant beneficial impact on the targeted countries as well as the international community as a whole, not only in the fields of agriculture, food security and production, and food safety, but also for the local and global prevention of emerging and re-emerging diseases of veterinary and public health importance. The project will be implemented in strong collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization. The actions proposed must be considered eligible for the concept of International Public Good.