What is ECTAD
Established in 2004, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) cooperates with over 45 FAO member countries to enhance their capacity to manage animal diseases, including high-impact diseases. By helping to avoid national, regional and global spread, the work of ECTAD contributes to the protection of people and animals from diseases and other health threats.
Through ECTAD, FAO works to build health systems’ capacities to enable countries and regions to prepare for, detect, prevent and control emerging infectious, zoonotic and transboundary diseases and to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Transboundary animal diseases (TADs) can spread rapidly irrespective of national borders. There are many TADs that can result in high incidence of disease and death in animals, thereby having serious socioeconomic and sometimes public health consequences while constituting a constant threat to the livelihoods of livestock farmers and the food security of the communities they serve.
ECTAD multidisciplinary teams implement dozens of FAO animal health projects and initiatives, currently funded by Italy, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United States of America Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
The One Health approach is embedded in the work of ECTAD as zoonotic transmission occurs at the human–animal–environment interface and a cross–disciplinary work at all levels is enhanced by ECTAD’s multidisciplinary global network.