The Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA) with the Commonwealth Veterinary Association (CVA) will jointly hold their Golden Jubilee celebrations, an International conference and a World Veterinary Day at Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya as from 25th to 29th April, 2017.

Important dates

• Tue 25Th April, 2017 – Official Opening and CVA Meeting
• Wed 26Th April, 2017 – Scientific Conference
• Thu 27Th April, 2017 – Scientific Conference and thereafter the KVA Annual General Meeting, side meetings and
  excursions
• Fri 28Th April, 2017 – Scientific Conference and Closing Ceremony
• Sat 29Th April, 2017 – World Veterinary Day Celebrations and Field Day

Please visit the conference dedicated page for more information and updates by clicking here  

Welcome message from the conference organizers:

It is with great pleasure that we update you on progress on the first Congress to bring together the global One Health and EcoHealth communities for One Health EcoHealth 2016. Our program is now 90% complete and we encourage you to check it out here www.oheh2016.org/program

The Congress will be a ‘meeting of the minds’ for researchers, policy makers and practitioners who are working towards more integrated approaches and effective responses to complex global health challenges. We think our program brings together a formidable array of outstanding science, knowledge and expertise and will excite anyone committed to innovation and better ways of working in global health management.

We have attracted prominent speakers from diverse scientific backgrounds and had an overwhelming response to our call for papers and posters. We are ‘blown away’ with the quantity and quality of submissions and thank everyone for their contributions.

From the outset we have focused on gender equality – and will continue to do so as we hone the final program.

We therefore warmly invite you to participate in what will be an amazing, rich global forum for learning, networking and collaboration. You will interact with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and with a common interest in protecting and promoting public, animal and ecosystem health.

More than 1,000 experts will gather to deliver 9 plenary presentations, 200 oral presentations and 780 poster presentations. The science, ideas and thinking draw on diverse expertise from more than 60 countries.

Following the Welcoming Ceremony on Saturday 3 December, plenary sessions will be held each morning of the next four days focusing on specific themes:

• Creating a healthier world
• Food and nutrition systems – feeding our world safely and sustainably
• Responding to emerging diseases and invasive species
• Integrating science, policy and action.

Across these themes, the many presentations will consider pressing global issues associated with climate change, food and water security and antimicrobial resistance. They will address zoonoses, environmental sustainability, education, the benefits and impacts of One Health and EcoHealth approaches, and all forms of health – population and environmental health, Indigenous health, ecosystem and ecological health, ocean health, domestic animal and wildlife health, the social, cultural and ecological determinants and dimensions of health – and much more.

There will also be symposium and discussion panels on hot topics such as:

• Ecological Health, biodiversity loss and the future of planet earth
• The Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN)
• Non-communicable diseases and the energy rich food system
• Education into Action: Building One Health Capacity in Asia
• Strengthening biosecurity systems
• One Health in Action: What’s Working and Why?

Daily special events will encourage networking and learning – about One Health, EcoHealth and Melbourne as a destination to visit and explore.

There will be a welcome reception, Congress dinner, guided early morning city and river walks, a PechaKucha for students, opportunities to speak with Indigenous Elders and breakfast talks. Pre-Congress workshops are also on offer in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Geelong.

We hope that you can join us for what will be an exciting Congress program in Melbourne.  Selected recently as the most livable city in the world, Melbourne is renowned as a global science and cultural capital. Melbourne and the surrounding area offer everyone something in which to delight.

We look forward to meeting you in December 2016.

Learn more about One Health EcoHealth 2016. 

Welcome message from organizers:

It is our pleasure to announce the sixth International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance, IMED 2016 to be held in Vienna, Austria from 4–7 November 2016. For those whose work deals with threats from infectious agents, IMED 2016 will once again bring leading scientists, clinicians and policy makers to Vienna to present new knowledge and breakthroughs and discuss how to discover, detect, understand, prevent and respond to outbreaks of emerging pathogens.

Since the last IMED in 2014, newly emerged diseases and outbreaks of familiar ones have continued to challenge us. The West African Ebola outbreak presented an unparalleled crisis of global proportions and there are many lessons yet to be learned from it. MERS coronavirus continued to challenge the Middle East, spreading dangerously in the healthcare setting, and showed its global threat with a major outbreak in the Republic of Korea. Eruptions of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry, wild birds and humans continue to occur. Zika virus appeared for the first time in the Americas, spreading widely in this region with plentiful competent vectors. A frightening role in fetal malformation has emerged. Diseases at the human-wildlife interface ranging from rabies to plague to Nipah continue to draw our attention. Growing resistance by pathogens to all types of therapeutic agents raises fundamental obstacles to our ability to respond to outbreaks and pandemics. We have witnessed the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict and the threat of intentional use of biological agents for nefarious purposes remains as real as ever. The European migrant crisis has raised questions regarding the re-emergence of infectious diseases and the monitoring and screening of migrants arriving in Europe and elsewhere.

Since its inception, IMED has been a summit that unifies our approach to pathogens in the broadest ecological context. Drawing together human and veterinary health specialists, IMED serves as a true One Health forum where those working in diverse specialties and diverse regions can meet, discuss, present and challenge one another with findings and new ideas. While pathogens emerge and mutate, our methodology for detection, surveillance, prevention, control, and treatment also continue to evolve. New approaches to vaccination and isolation the uses of novel data sources and genomics, novel laboratory methods, rapid point-of-care diagnostics, risk communication, political and societal responses to outbreaks have all seen innovation and change that will be explored at IMED 2016.

ProMED and the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID), along with all of our co-sponsors and participating organizations, look forward to welcoming you to Vienna. Target Audience: Physicians, veterinarians and other health care workers and scientists, public health leaders, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, journalists, other interested persons including the entire ProMED-mail community.

Larry MADOFF & Britta LASSMANN
Co-Chairs, Scientific Program Committee
ISID, Boston, USA

Find out more by visiting the webpage: http://imed.isid.org/welcome.shtml