Middle East and North African Health Informatics Association (MENAHIA): Technological initiatives for ‘One Health’

Abstract

MENAHIA (Middle East and North African Health Informatics Association) is the International Medical Informatics Association chapter dedicated to the Middle East and North Africa region. This region is rapidly growing in terms of the use of health informatics or what has been recently coined “digital health”. Human health is highly affected by the health of the environment, animal health, food, nutrition, climate change, and many other factors that are beyond the biological or genetic structure of human beings. The impact of animal health and the health of the environment on people's health is an old phenomenon but recent reemerging and appearance of diseases have clearly demonstrated the link between these. The Novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that almost all of us have been suffering from is an example of this.A number of countries in the region have already shown the depth and the work that they do to integrate the concept of ‘One Health’ in the public health surveillance system as they have described the work that has been done to capture data from databases other than those dealing with human beings. The examples that were provided to monitor the health of animals, agriculture, environmental health, climate change, and man-made and natural disasters are just examples of what countries have been registering in their databases and informing the health authorities of these changes and emerging trends.