Academy for Educational Development

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2006 —  The Academy for Educational Development (AED), a Washington-based nonprofit organization, is leading a worldwide effort to help the U.S. Agency for International Development in the prevention and control of avian influenza. The effort is part of the U.S. government’s global emergency response to avian influenza.

AED’s three-year initiative will support governments, civil society groups, and private sector organizations in developing communication strategies on prevention and outbreak response related to avian influenza (H5N1) in Africa, Asia and Near East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Eurasia.

Through television and radio public service ads and distribution of printed materials to animal and human health workers, the initiative aims to educate the public on high-risk behaviors for contracting avian flu, practical preventive measures, and how to recognize and respond to cases of bird flu in animals and humans. Target audiences include backyard farmers, small scale poultry producers, consumers of poultry, health care workers, veterinary staff, and communities living in outbreak areas.

“This new initiative recognizes AED’s expertise in using communication to change key behaviors related to infectious diseases, and how our approach can be applied to emergency outbreak situations,” said Margaret Burns Parlato, director of the AED Global Health, Population, and Nutrition Group. “Our avian influenza team looks forward to building on our work in Southeast Asia.”

For the past year, AED has been working on education campaigns to prevent the spread of avian influenza in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, one of the hardest hit countries according to the World Health Organization.

Materials, strategies, and lessons learned will be made available to governmental and non governmental organizations through Web sites and other channels. For further information regarding AED’s work on avian influenza visit http://avianflu.aed.org.

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