Twinning Bulgaria Communicable Diseases: Feedback on the Final Conference

On June 13th in Sofia at the Ministry of Health, the Final Conference  closed the Twinning project “Strengthening of the National Surveillance System for Communicable Diseases”. The latter was implemented by the Italian Institute of Health through the institutional leadership of the Ministry of Health, DG for International Relations and the EU in collaboration with Formez.
The project was divided into five components for a total of 650 man days and had a duration of 15 months during which a pool of 54 experts carried out 171 training and technical assistance missions at the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) in Sofia.  In addition to the working days conducted in Bulgaria, four study visits were undertaken of which three took place in Italy at the ISS with the involvement of 15 NCIPD functionaries, and one in Slovenia at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology in Ljubljana, Centre of Excellence in Europe for the diagnosis of tick-borne diseases.
At the Final Conference, the project partners and in particular, the Bulgarian Vice Minister of Health, Valery Tzeckov, and Ms Savastano from the Commercial Division of the Italian Embassy in Sofia in representation of Embassador Stefano Benazzo, were present. They both expressed their appreciation for the work carried out and the positive results achieved which concretely contributed to strengthening NCIPD competencies for a more efficient Surveillance System on communicable diseases.
Furthermore, the Italian Embassy emphasized the relevance of the long-term collaboration between the two countries in the sanitary field which emerged from a Bilateral Agreement between the two Ministries of Health respectively, and which subsequently proceeded with interventions financed by MAE under Law 84. These consolidated the liaisons between Italian businesses and institutes and their Bulgarian counterparts, in particular in the sector of vaccine production.
Over 15 months of joint work by Italian and Bulgarian experts, scientific cooperation projects were developed between the two institutes, above all in the scope of the 7° Framework Program, thus confirming the successful results of the projects which went beyond the mere implementation of specific project activities with the intention to establish broader cooperation.
The works concluded with the promise of shared commitment between partners in the pursuit of scientific and institutional collaboration with the wish that in the near future, Bulgaria - as beneficiary country - may work hand in hand with Italy with regard to the process of Institution Capacity Building at the benefit of other Beneficiary Countries.