Further to the visit of Dr. Seyed Mohammad Aghamiri, the head of Iran Veterinary Organization (IVO), Dr. Ghasem Rezaianzadeh, the vice president of health and prevention, and Dr. Mohammad Saeedi, the director general of the animal health and disease management office of IVO, to Pasteur Institute of Iran, the domains of development of bilateral cooperation were explored.

In this meeting, Dr. Aghamiri gave emphasis to the progress of scientific and diagnostic collaboration and performing joint applied research in the realm of zoonotic diseases between the IVO and the Pasteur Institute of Iran. Taking into account, the records of prior cooperation, particularly in the domain of rabies and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) between the two centers, he insisted on more use of the research, diagnostic and production abilities of the Pasteur Institute of Iran and asked for the investment of the institute to produce the animal rabies vaccine required by the country.

In this meeting, Dr. Rahim Sorouri, the General Director of the Pasteur Institute of Iran, also put more emphasis on the aim of Pasteur Institute to ameliorate health, and emphasized on paying more attention to the one health approach. Dr. Sorouri, as mentioning the abilities of Pasteur Institute of Iran, point out the requirement for larger convergence and alignment of the activities of the two centers.

In this meeting, it was determined to conduct additional meetings to follow up on the approvals in the future.

It must be mentioned   that in the field of zoonotic diseases, reference laboratories for CCHF, rabies, plague, tularemia, Q fever, and influenza are active in Pasteur Institute of Iran. In the meantime, other laboratories working in the realm of research and diagnosis of brucellosis, leptospirosis, leishmaniasis, borreliosis, bartonellasis, and rickettsia have meanwhile animal reservoirs.