Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government how they are supporting lower and middle income countries with weak animal health systems to combat avian influenza effectively.

The UK continues to play a leading role in this critical area as part of our wider work to tackle zoonotic diseases, which are responsible for around 60% of all human diseases and 75% of all new and emerging infectious diseases.

Our world-class laboratories provide capability-building services to global partners including lower and middle income countries, integrating technical support, surveillance, risk analysis and epidemiology expertise, and participating in numerous global research and development networks which offer a multi-disciplinary approach for early detection systems and emergency preparedness and response coordination, with a focus on animal and zoonotic diseases, including avian influenza.

We also support country and regional partners through our Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget to strengthen global health systems, so they are better able to prepare for, prevent, detect and respond to a wide range of health threats, including zoonotic diseases like avian influenza. This includes our Animal Health Systems Strengthening Project, International Health Regulations Strengthening Project and Tackling Deadly Disease in Africa Programme, all of which take a One Health approach, emphasising the connections between human, animal, plant and environmental health.

In addition, we are providing ODA funding to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to build avian influenza prevention, preparedness and response capacity in West Africa. Furthermore, we are funding The One Health Poultry Hub, a multistakeholder development research partnership working in Southeast Asia to support safer poultry systems. We are also strengthening genomic surveillance capability through the New Variant Assessment Platform, which will help countries to deal more effectively with pathogens of pandemic potential, including avian influenza.

All UK Aid spend is published by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in the form of Statistics on International Development and is available at GOV.UK.