ECDC takes on chairmanship of the Cross-agency One Health Task Force
The second meeting of the Cross-agency One Health Task Force was hosted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on 10-11 September 2024.
The task force includes EMA, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). Representatives from the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety also attended the meeting. The chairmanship of the task force rotates on an annual basis, and in September 2024, ECDC took on this role.
The main focus of the meeting was the discussion of actions outlined under five strategic objectives of the Cross-agency One Health task force framework for action:
- strategic coordination
- research coordination
- capacity building
- stakeholder engagement
- joint inter-agency activities.
ECDC leads work on the fourth objective to engage relevant stakeholders (including EU institutions, Member States, multilateral bodies and other external key players) to develop and implement coordinated communication activities on One Health.
Among other points on the agenda, ECDC presented the preliminary results of qualitative semi-structured interviews with some EU/EEA countries on the vision, enablers and barriers of implementation of the One Health approach at the national level.
The Cross-agency One Health Task Force began its operations in 2023, following a joint commitment expressed by the agencies at the ONE Conference in 2022. The vision of the task force is to enable EU agencies to successfully contribute to the implementation of the One Health approach in Europe.
