REPORT ON THE SPECIAL SESSION ON IDENTIFYING THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH NEEDS FOR INFLUENZA IN AFRICA
4 JUNE 2010, MARRAKESH, MOROCCO
Overview
In November 2009, WHO convened a global consultation to launch the WHO Public Health Research Agenda for Influenza. The goal of this agenda is to guide research so that knowledge gained improves public health decision making in preventing and controlling influenza.
The agenda is built around areas of particular importance:
1. Reducing the risk of emergence of pandemic influenza (Stream 1)
2. Limiting the spread of pandemic, zoonotic and seasonal epidemic influenza (Stream 2)
3. Minimizing the impact of pandemic, zoonotic and seasonal epidemic influenza (Stream 3)
4. Optimizing the treatment of patients (Stream 4)
5. Promoting the development and application of modern public health tools (Stream 5)
The participants agreed that the agenda should be specified further in regional and country contexts. Following the launch of the agenda, two regional meetings were held in the WHO South‐ East Asian region and Western Pacific region in 2010 and 2011 respectively to implement the agenda at the regional level.