World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)

World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)

Subject – Environment

Context – Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2021: OIE initiatives for responsible, prudent use of antimicrobials in animals in Asia-Pacific.

Concept –

• The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) was established in 1924 in response to the need to fight animal diseases at global level.
• It is the intergovernmental organisation responsible for improving animal health worldwide and currently has 182 members.
  • India is one of the member countries.
• The main objective of the OIE is to control epizootic diseases and thus to prevent their spread.
• OIE has been addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) for many years.
  • In 2016, it launched The OIE Strategy on Antimicrobial Resistance and the Prudent Use of Antimicrobials that has four key objectives of enhancing awareness and understanding, strengthening knowledge through surveillance and research, supporting good governance and capacity building and implementation of international standards.
• OIE develops normative documents relating to rules that Member Countries can use to protect themselves from the introduction of diseases and pathogens.
• OIE standards are recognised by the World Trade Organization as reference international sanitary rules.
• It is headquartered in Paris, France.
• The OIE does not depend on the UN system; its autonomy is both institutional and financial and its activities are governed by its own constitutional texts.
• The OIE is mandated by the global tripartite to take a lead role in developing and maintaining the global database on AMU in animals (AMU database).
  • The Asia-Pacific region is the highest consumer of antimicrobials (by animal biomass) as compared with other regions, according to the Fifth OIE Annual Report on Antimicrobial Agents Intended for Use in Animals.