Health Minister Mohammed Al-Hayazie holds talks with Agriculture Minister Waleed Al-Khereiji.

The Ministries of Health and Agriculture will strengthen their cooperation in fighting diseases transmitted from animals to humans.

This was revealed following a visit on Thursday by Health Minister Mohammed Al-Hayazie, heading a delegation, to Agricultural Minister Waleed Al-Khereiji. Assistant Minister for Animal Resource Affairs at the Agricultural Ministry Sami bin Sulaiman Al-Nohait was present at the meeting.

The visit is the first top level direct contact between the two sides to deal with this type of diseases since the outbreak of MERS-CoV as one sort of the animal sourced diseases.

The Health Ministry delegation consisted of Vice Health Minister for Health Affairs Mansoor Al-Hawwasi, Vice Health Minister for Planning and Development Mohammed Khushaim, Deputy Health Minister for Public Health Abdul Aziz bin Saeed and Assistant Deputy Health Minister for Preventive Medicine Abdullah Al-Asiri.

The talks focused on further strengthening cooperation between the two ministries in fighting diseases transmitted from animals to humans, in particular Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

The two sides agreed on forming a team on each side to cooperate with each other in conducting surveillance, testing suspected cases of diseases, whether human or animal, implementing infection prevention measures among health care professionals and carrying out public awareness campaigns, including those dealing with animals Kingdomwide.

Also, the two sides explored ways of cooperation with external universities and their research center specialists in dealing with MERS-CoV, discussed how to develop and upgrade the capabilities of the local technical equipment and laboratories in their efforts to fight the disease and emphasized the importance of keeping the public informed on all developments related to MERS-CoV.

The two ministries urged citizens and expatriates to remain alert about MERS-CoV and careful while dealing with camels, a source of the infection, especially after laboratory tests established a link between camels and infected people with the disease.

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