About 100 participants gathered at Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan in the framework of the Biosurveillance Network of the Silk Road. The following countries were represented: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Urkaine, Modavlie, Uzbekistan, Byelorussia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. It should be noted that this network has recently expanded to Bulgaria and Romania. The meeting is dedicated to the purpose of strengthening approaches, which are the basis for effective preparedness to prevent, respond and recover from communicable disease threats, within One health Approach.

The first day was focusing on the Economic burden of zoonotic diseases as wekk as Networking & regional collaboration. Economical references from recent "One Health" reports (such as World Bank, 2018) were presented together with results from the Network for the Evaluation of One Health. 

The second day provided an update on the Epidemiology of different zoonoses in the BNSR countries, including data on brucellosis. Claire Ponsart animated the "Animal Health" session and was invited to give a presentation on "Brucella genus: a high genetic homology together with a wide host range".  The third day was dedicated to existing surveillance systems and the prevention of biological incidents, with the participation of INTERPOL and a representative of USEUCOM (US European Command).

A report of this mission will be published in the next EURL Newsletter.

The 12^th edition was very successful regrouping 41 participants and 33 countries at the Animal Health Laboratory, ANSES. For the first time, a representative from Serbia attended the workshop.

Following the first session describing EURL activities, fruitful discussions were held on molecular approaches. Exchanges on Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) approaches were boosted by our invited speakers, Pimlapas Leekitcharoenphon (DTU), Giuliano Garofolo (IZSAM) and Benjamin Felix (ANSES, EURL for Listeria) sharing their experience on WGS-based identification of bacteria. Oral communications related to characterization of Brucella strains were further presented by National Reference Laboratories of Croatia (Silvio Spicic) and United Kingdom (Roland Ashford).

The second day was focusing on serological methods: Jiabo Ding (from the Institute of Veterinary Drug Control, China) and John Mc Given (APHA, UK) presented results of promising serological approaches aiming to differentiate vaccinated and infected animals. Finally, a representative of DG SANTE (Jostein Dragset) presented an update of delegated acts to be implemented in the framework of the Animal Health Law.

Presentations will be soon available on the 2019 Workshop webpage.

Thanks to all speakers and participants for their excellent contributions ! #EURL #WGS #Brucellosis #AHL #ANSES