Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS) surveillance training and experience sharing workshop was held in Harare, Zimbabwe from 17-19 June 2015. The participants came from 11 African countries, including Ethiopia. The workshop was facilitated by WHO's Inter Country Support Team of Eastern and Southern Africa (IST/ESA) and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The workshop shared technical updates on progress and challenges in relation to reaching set goals on measles elimination, embracing rubella control efforts and sharing the lesson learned from Zimbabwe and Tanzania. After three days of discussion, the participants had reached consensus on how to strengthen the congenital rubella syndrome burden documentation surveillance system, identified the next steps and agreed to implement accordingly.

The meeting concluded with a number of recommendations, including the need to update vaccination policy documents and infection control guidelines to allow health care workers vaccination against measles and rubella where vaccines are already available and to manage infectious cases in health care setting respectively. WHO committed to advocate and mobilize additional resources from partners to support specific areas of operational studies in addition to the technical support to evidence generation on the disease burden of CRS.

For more information, please contact 

Fiona Braka,
Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health and Nutrition
Email:   %20brakaf [at] who.int (brakaf[at]who[dot]int)
Tel: (+251) 911 200 765

or

Mrs Selamawit Yilma
Communications Officer (EPI)
WHO Ethiopia
Email:  %20yilmas [at] who.int (yilmas[at]who[dot]int)