Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS)

Since 2003, we have been facilitating regional cooperation against the threat posed by biological attacks and natural disease outbreaks. In partnership with the NTI Global Health and Security Initiative, we formed the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS), through which the Ministries of Health of Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority are sharing data about disease outbreaks. Currently, MECIDS is assisting Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian health and veterinary issues to work together to manage the threat of avian influenza ("bird flu").

MECIDS members and partners come from governments, universities, and non-governmental organizations, including the Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian Ministries of Health; Tel Aviv University, Al-Quds University, and the Cooperative Monitoring Center-Amman.

MECIDS is building capacity within each nation to deal with a disease outbreak, whether naturally occurring or deliberately caused. In addition, we are seeking to build confidence-intangible human relationships that can help ease the relations on a daily basis and that would be essential for managing a cross-border crisis.

The trust and procedures developed during years of cooperation and communication through MECIDS were useful to the Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian Ministries of Health during the current avian influenza outbreak.

Since avian influenza was first identified in Israel on March 16, 2006, MECIDS convened three meetings: one for coordination between Israelis and Palestinians; a second that expanded to include Jordanians and Egyptians; and a third that brought donors and international agencies to meet with the four regional partners and to discuss the regional dimensions of the influenza problem.

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