We are happy to announce the launch of “EMPHNET WEBi Series”, which we consider as an innovative approach for enhancing dialogue and reaching a broader range of audience in support of better health outcomes. WEBi will allow us to gather thoughts and ideas that are pertinent to relevant public health issues in our region. We will use the webinars to shed light on what matters to public health professionals, hoping that our ideas and thoughts will be used in fostering actions and decisions.

Considering the difficult context created by COVID-19 and the need to increase collaboration and exchange of information, we opted to launch our Webinar initiative (WEBi) today believing that we are at a critical stage in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to savor the privilege of the digital world and use that to close the growing gap in coordination, experience sharing, capacity building and relationship building. We aspire to provide a virtual space where public health professionals, stakeholders, experts and partners can join to support addressing regional health priorities; and in particular to achieve better preparedness and response capacities to public health emergencies. We believe that COVID-19 has touched the lives of all and we wanted to play an important role in accelerating the exchange of information and to foster a mixture of knowledge and experience, thus capturing the momentum for affecting change and transformation that accompanies dialogue, coordination and communication in the presence of travel limitations.

Through EMPHNET WEBi Series we aim to foster engagement by allowing a large number of participants from different countries to engage in online discussions. We aim to be a catalyst for change by facilitating information exchange between experts and professionals in public health. Therefore, we invite you to join our first webinar on June 16, 2020 between 17:00 and 18:30 Jordan Local Time (UTC+3) with the title “Implementing Strategies for Easing off COVID-19 Restrictions.”

The webinar session will host a panel of experts who will focus on:

• Ensuring appropriate measures are satisfied when easing off COVID-19 restrictions
• Adopting a flexible and informative approach for easing off COVID-19 restrictions
• Country experience with easing off COVID-19 restrictions

Participating experts include:

• Dr. Seif Al Abri, Director General of Disease Surveillance and Control, MoH, Oman and Senior Consultant of Infectious Diseases
• Dr. Mohammed Youbi, Director of the Department of Epidemiology, MoH Morocco
• Dr. Mark Salter, Consultant in Global Health and Senior Medical Advisor Public Health England
• Dr. Wessam Mankoula, Lead of Emergency Operations Centre, CDC Africa

The session will be moderated by Dr. Faris Lami Public Health Expert and Associate Professor, Baghdad University Iraq.

To attend this webinar, please register here.