Perspectives Posted on 2023-12-12 11:44:08
WOAH actions
How can we engage Members in the PVS Pathway: Aquatic?
Keywords
Authors
Mario Ignacio Algüerno, Capacity-Building Department, World Organisation for Animal Health
Within the framework of its Global Aquatic Animal Health Strategy, WOAH contributes to building capacities and increasing the use of the PVS Pathway to enable countries to improve their animal health systems.
The PVS Pathway supports Members to implement WOAH’s intergovernmental standards and continually improve their Aquatic Animal Health Services (AAHS). Although Members highly value the programme, utilisation of the PVS Pathway has been limited for the aquatic sector.
The PVS Pathway empowers national AAHS by providing them with a comprehensive understanding of their strengths and weaknesses using a globally consistent methodology – a useful external perspective that can reveal gaps, inefficiencies and opportunities for innovation.
A PVS Evaluation of the AAHS raises awareness among stakeholders and supports continuous improvement by assessing 47 Critical Competencies comprising several cross-cutting elements that are the basic requirements for functioning AAHS. By assessing these competencies and proposing recommendations to enhance performance over time, WOAH contributes to building capacities and enabling countries to take ownership and prioritise improvements to their animal health systems.
As one of the activities committed to in the WOAH Aquatic Animal Health Strategy 2021–2025, WOAH conducted a survey to identify barriers to the use of the PVS Pathway by its Members, in order to explore opportunities to overcome them and increase the use of the PVS Evaluation tools.
Results from 119 Members showed that the vast majority (87%) considered that WOAH offers a sufficient range of tools and activities to support the strengthening of the AAHS, and 60% would be interested in requesting a PVS Evaluation in the next five years. The main barriers identified to requesting PVS services are the costs related to hosting a mission and, secondly, the lack of knowledge about the benefits that the PVS Pathway can bring to AAHS. Based on these findings, WOAH is currently working on strategies to increase Members’ utilisation of the PVS Pathway, such as a PVS Pathway information system, hybrid delivery formats (combining face-to-face and remote) for PVS Evaluation missions, and a communication strategy to enhance Members’ understanding of the PVS Pathway Aquatic activities and their benefits.
The strategies included promotion of the tool in three remote areas and physical PVS Pathway Orientation Training Workshops in the Asia and Middle East Regions in 2022 for 134 participants from 9 WOAH Members countries. In the first quarter of 2023, two workshops will train more than 90 participants from 31 countries.
https://doi.org/10.20506/bull.2023.2.3411
