This first regional training in Africa to diagnose avian influenza saw the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Africa Union's Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) organize a series of intensive training courses conducted over the last year across the continent. The project, funded by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ by its German acronym) and implemented by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), has helped to improve transparency, communication and information exchange in bird flu campaigns.

Trainees wearing protective clothing are shown by a trainer how to carry out a post-mortem examination and collect test samples from a chicken suspected to be infected with avian influenza.

The inter-sector cooperation achieved by the project - tapping agricultural, veterinary and medical experts for disease control - is unusual, particularly in countries lacking the resources to bring together experts from different ministries and disciplines. This cooperative aspect has excited the imaginations of ILRI administrators, among others.

"The network of African veterinary and human diagnosticians created by this training over the past year has great potential," comments John McDermott, ILRI research director. "It has fostered 'diagnostic champions' in Africa who are being consulted by their colleagues. The benefits of this will go beyond avian influenza to other important infectious diseases of both people and animals."

One of the trainees practices how to collect a blood sample from the wing vein of a chicken as fellow trainees look on.

ILRI Director General Carlos Seré also sees opportunity to build on the momentum that has been created: "We're interested to explore with others how this regional emergency training might be transformed into long-term indigenous capacity building for better control of infectious diseases in Africa."

Others organizing the courses or providing training materials were the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Animal Health Organization (OIE), World Health Organisation (WHO) and US-based Centers for Disease Control (CDC). ILRI and AU-IBAR together conducted a basic 10-day training course in Cameroon, Kenya and Senegal. They drew trainers from OIE, FAO and WHO avian influenza reference laboratories; ILRI; AU-IBAR; CDC-Kenya; Institut Pasteur; Centre Pasteur; and African universities and research organizations.

The courses revealed that most African countries have the capacity to collect samples of bird flu virus, including the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus, and ship them to designated laboratories for analysis. Some of these labs can also perform basic serological tests for bird flu virus, but few are equipped with the advanced molecular diagnosis and virology tests or the biosafety level 3 facilities needed to handle live H5N1 virus. ILRI and AU-IBAR staff who organized the courses targeted the few labs that did have these facilities to serve as regional reference laboratories, providing 20 of their staff members with two advanced training courses (one in English, the other in French) conducted at South Africa's ARC-Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in Pretoria, which is equipped with all the facilities needed to diagnose avian influenza.

GTZ implemented the project as part of its Poverty Reduction in Rural Areas project, additionally procuring for laboratories in affected countries equipment for diagnosing bird flu. In early July, the first follow-up training took place in three veterinary laboratories in Ghana, with staff of laboratories in Accra, Pong Tamale and Kumasi trained by the German Friedrich-Löffler-Institute.

For more information, e-mail at ILRI Duncan Mwangi (d.mwangi@cgiar.org), Roger Pellé (r.pelle@cgiar.org), Margaret Macdonald-Levy (m_macdonald-levy@lineone.net) or Susan MacMillan (s.macmillan@cgiar.org).