GIZ/Nguyen Van Tien
The GIZ country office and WCS Indonesia joined the Alliance’s Voices from the Ground format on May 8th, 2024. The Alliance Secretariat warmly welcomed Anja Barth and Nhung Nguyen as well as Ahmad Faisal from WCS Indonesia as speakers for the Event. Miss Barth and Miss Nguyen presented on behalf of the GIZ country package on ‘Informing Policy and Technical Recommendations to Ensure Biosecurity at Facilities Farming Wild Animals in Viet Nam’. Mister Faisal continued to present on the ‘Socioeconomic Impact of Commercial Wildlife Trade and its Relation to Zoonotic Risk of Emerging Infectious Diseases in North Sulawesi and Gorontalo’.
As part of the GIZ country office in Viet Nam, Anja Barth is responsible for various projects on forestry and biodiversity conservation and Nhung Nguyen who joined the department in 2023 has extensive experience working with policy makers and wildlife practitioners. Ahmad Faisal is part of WCS Indonesia and the One Health Senior Program Coordinator.
Miss Barth and Miss Nguyen started off with an outline of the GIZ project approach: Integrating three crucial steps from policy review (national and international) to applied research on a national level, to multi-stakeholder policy advocacy. Yet, these three steps are not necessarily restricted to linear relationships. During this process, biosecurity has been identified as a valuable entry point towards addressing zoonotic risk emergence at wildlife farms. Having a closer look at wildlife farm management, Miss Barth and Miss Nguyen elaborated on the issues that arise with integrating biosecurity measures in wildlife farm management. These issues include aspects such as a unclear responsibilities among relevant management agencies, lack of defined penalties for offences and non-compliance, limited information sharing, or lack of clear guidance, especially regarding hygiene standards and pandemic prevention. From identifying what needs to be improved to lessons learned, on the base of those lessons learned are communication and education. More concrete suggestions for integrating biosecurity measures include a recommended set of biosecurity measures for wildlife farming for further elaborating into technical guidlines. However, for the continuation of improved biosecurity measures, legal, institutional, and technical factors and aspects need to be included in future discussions.
Moving from Viet Nam to Indonesia, Mister Faisal outlined the health risk in wildlife meat demand issue faced in North Sulawesi and Gorontalo. The large amount of wildlife trade occurs, commonly transported by ground, across the region could lead to a potentially increasing risk of zoonotic spillovers. Each spillover risk value differs at each actor of the wildlife trade supply chain. These values have been identified through a heat map that shows these risks per actor in the study that has been conducted. Better understanding of the risk profile and value at each actor will be crucial to prevent and control the pathogen spillover risk in the region. The results and recommendations deriving from this study refer to increasing efforts for data collection, further genetic sampling, and exit/entry hub assessment to gather information on trade routes.
If you would like to learn more about the projects, you can log into the Members Area and watch the recording, which also includes the follow-up discussion which outlined some similarities found in both cases as well as differences and other regional examples. Please feel free to contact the Secretariat in case you have any further questions.
See below for more information on the results of the GIZ country package project in Viet Nam.
Reports in Vietnamese:
Here you can find reports in English: