Good quality disease information and reporting is needed in order to understand the disease situation, support decision-making, prevent potential disease incursion and respond quickly. Thus, it is crucial to apply a system at national level to enhance veterinary services’ capacities in disease reporting from the field to decision-makers and information sharing among stakeholders. For this reason, FAO has developed EMA-i for data collection and to facilitate real-time disease reporting to support veterinary services’ capacities in disease surveillance implemented in the field.

Using smartphones, animal disease information is collected with the EMA-i application from the field. These data, which are geo-referenced, are entered into the app and safely stored in the FAO Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i). Through the financial support of the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the training targeted 32 participants from the veterinary departments of six governorates; Al-Anbar, Al-Muthanna, Basrah, Dohuk, Ninewa and Wasit in addition to Baghdad and Erbil, and representatives from the Ministry of Health as part of the One Health approach. The training aimed to improve animal disease data collection and real-time reporting of animal disease outbreaks from the field to the national level by using the EMA-i application.