Kick-Off Meeting

OBJECTIVES & CONTENT

The Kick-Off Meeting was the opportunity to officially launch the new phase of the MediLabSecure project with a presentation of its objectives and activities.

Gathering 110 participants from more than 25 countries (representatives from participating countries, partners, stakeholders and funder), this 2-day event successfully initiated the integration of the 5 new countries members from Sahel. It also allowed to introduce the 2 new components with the inclusion of the Veterinary Services in the network of Public Health officials, and the integration of environmental and ecological features in the development of emerging infections' risk assessment and early warning tools.

The meeting consisted in plenary sessions along with parallel sessions to discuss in details the foreseen activities. Other networking events, including also representatives from complementary EU-funded projects, were organized to stimulate and promote interactions with a One Health spirit.

In line with the CBRN CoE initiative, this meeting contributed to put the second phase on track for the next 3 years, to increase the project impact and empower its sustainability towards strenghtening preparedness against vector-borne diseases in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Sahel Regions.

Expertise Counters

To enhance networking and intersectoral exchanges during the meeting, an "expertise counters" session was scheduled during the lunch break of the second day.

During this activity, MediLabsecure work package leaders animated a counter to exchange on specific aspects of their work package. Besides, representatives from related EU-funded projects (STRONGLABS, MediPIET, Infravec2 and LeiShield-MATI) also participated in this interactive session to present their projects and explored possible collaborations with the audience.

Keynote and round table: Middle East One Health Approach in early warning & preparedness for zoonoses

A training on entomology for non-entomologists was carried out on the fourth day of the Regional Meeting.

Alternating between small courses and practical exercises, this interactive one-day training on basic medical and veterinary entomology was addressed to all MediLabSecure people who are not specialist in entomology.

Charter of Values Collaboratives Design

All network members were invited to actively participate in the design of the MediLabSecure charter of values. The idea was to encourage and foster the network ownership and sustainability by collaboratively brainstorming on the values, aspirations and commitments that unite the network.

This workshop was tailored as a brainstorming session inspired from the MetaPlan methodology.

Participants were divided into 3 mixed groups (the groups were designed to mingle countries and working groups in order to favor collaboration and ensure representatives results). The same two questions were asked to the three groups, one question after the other, and they had to write their ideas on post-it notes, using one per idea. Altogether with the coordination team, post-its were read out loudly and organized according to their similarities into categories.

After the session, the coordination team worked to bring the results from the three groups together. A restitution of the results was made the next morning to the participants and noticeboards were created to summarize the different points The boards were displayed outside the meeting room and the participants were asked to "vote" for the nine items they considered most relevant They were given nine stickers they had to stick on the boards.

This exercise will be done with participants from each country of the MediLabSecure network. The first session will set the basis for the other Regional Meetings and the next brainstorming sessions will take into account the preliminary results of this one.