An international workshop on Incident Command System (ICS), aimed at combating bird flu is currently underway at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi.

The five-day deliberation, which began on Monday and is jointly organized by the Department of Veterinary Services in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspections Service (USA-APHIS) will seek to address the problem of avian influenza.

Participants are drawn from the departments of veterinary services of Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal and The Gambia.
In his welcoming remarks, Barry L Wells, United States ambassador to The Gambia, expressed delight at the fact that United States Department of Agriculture is sponsoring the five-day international workshop. He urged participants to take the workshop seriously.

For his part, Kekoi Kuyateh, deputy permanent secretary at the Department of State for Agriculture, said The Gambia, like many other countries around the world, has benefited greatly from the United States Department of Agriculture in the area of capacity building, provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), sampling and diagnostic kits.

He thanked the government and people of the United States of America for the tremendous global efforts in the control and prevention of avian influenza.