On the 28 and 29 of June 2011, the workshop for the launch of the Mauritanian national Climate-Health Work Group (CHWG) was held in Nouakchott (Mauritania), being Mauritania the first of the countries participating in the project HEALTHMET that sets up the CHWG.
Project HEALTHMET encourages the establishment of links between health and meteorological authorities in five pilot countries, by means of the creation of national Work Groups whose mission is to promote the use of meteorological and climatological information to improve the prevention and the fight against epidemiological diseases sensitive to climatic variations. Diseases such as meningitis, malaria and Rift Valley fever have a great human and economic cost in these countries and it is known that they are related to environmental and climatic factors.
The General Secretaries for the Ministries for Equipment and Transport and the Ministry of Health presided over the opening ceremony along with the Director General of the National Meteorological Office, the Mauritanian representative of the WHO and representatives of the WMO and AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Agency).
Around 40 people attended the workshop, representative of various authorities and organisations related to health services, meteorologists, universities and NGOs. Also present was a representative of the Spanish Oficina Técnica de Cooperación (Technical Cooperation Office) in Mauritania.
A work plan has been produced that will be developed over the coming 12 months.
The presentations and documents produced from the workshop are available in the website program file.
Participants - Creation of the Mauritanian national Climate-Health Work Group
