 Thank you so much. Those in the room and those online. I'd like to welcome you to the inaugural Kenya One Health Conference. And first I'd like to invite my colleague Dr. Bernard Bette to start introducing the day. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Lian. And really a great pleasure to see all of you online and also in the room. So today we launch, we commence our Kenya One Health Conference. And I still have two things only to do. One is of course to welcome you, but also to give you a short presentation, which clarifies what ORECA, which is the host project for this conference does. My name is Bernard Bette and I'm the team leader for the One Health Center in Africa. This is a project funded by BMZ. And of course it's led by Ilri and I wanted first to look to say who is Ilri before we come to the project. And we know Ilri is one of the CGIR institutions, which uses agriculture research to reduce poverty. And it's one of the 15 CGIR centers, which all constitute that CG institutions. In general, we have up to 8,000 scientists, researchers and technical staff who coordinate in one way or another to implement research on crops, livestock, environment, and many other sectors. Coming back to ORECA, of course, this is led by Ilri and it's now in its second year of implementation. It was funded basically to do four main things, or before those four main things, the main focus is to enhance health of people, livestock, environment, and of course wildlife. But it has four main aspects. One is to support one health initiatives, which have been set up in the sub-Saharan region where we are focusing on. So it aims at building capacity on one health through studentships also by working with communities and also by working with government institutions. The third one is to continue working on ongoing one health projects and these are mainly applied one health research projects, which aim to seek solutions on the ground. These are applied research, which then helps to formulate policies and practices, which the fourth component of that objective is on. Just to come back closer into the specific activities we have classified our work into four thematic areas and we call them food safety, emerging infectious diseases, neglected zoonosis, and AMR, that's antimicrobial resistance. So these are thematic areas we know there is really so much overlap, there is so much coordination across these thematic areas, but we decided to classify them in those pillars for the sake of management and implementation of activities. And they also specifically focus on specific research questions, which sometimes are not necessarily cross cutting in some cases. On capacity building, as I said earlier on, there are three main areas of interest and one is working with credit fellows. Currently we have already hired seven PhDs, five MSCs, and also working with bachelors in some countries. And in addition to credit fellowships and students, we also work with communities, and we really want to enhance dissemination of knowledge, working with communities on one health. We have some supply stations which we want to start that work immediately. And lastly on behavior change communication, targeting for the chain actors, and that could be seen to be part of the capacity strengthening intervention. Lastly on networks, I have a slide which follows that. And to say we started this work last year where we are mapping one health networks in the region, the region of course is sub-Saharan Africa. And we already have a live database which we keep updating on which one health is working where, and what are their specific interests, and how can Eureka work with them to further their interest in terms of their influence on the ground. So that's basically what I wanted to say about Eureka and we have a big team of thematic leaders and you can see in the first row on the left side, including Ashni, Delia, Leon here with me, working as leaders of these thematic areas I mentioned. Ditasinika is our PI, he has been leading the development of the project ever since it was launched two years ago, and Ektah is our communication together with Joffrey, and Christina is also one of our coordinators who really works with our partners in Germany. Lastly, we have many graduate fellows and we have a few there I think whom we have currently on our website. That's one component of the project theme leaders, but you also have a list of 10 advisory committee members who are really be, we are very grateful for their guidance and discussions which we have to shape how we implement the activities on the ground. So you will, if you will visit our website, you'll be able to see who those advisory committee members are, as well as their contacts and that could be a good way of learning more. So let me stop there and share with you. Of course a link for our website where you can find more material on the One Health Center so I want to hand over back to Leon to continue describing how the conference will run. So thanks, Eglia. Thank you so much Bernard. So just a couple of housekeeping points before we proceed so we're very lucky that we're joined by many participants on zoom today. And so please those of you on zoom mute your mics when you join. If you're speaking remotely, please turn on your videos for the majority of participants we would like to capture all your thoughts and contributions in the chat function and to note for everybody that this session is being recorded. So why have why are we here today and why are we having a Kenya One Health Conference. So we came together as a wrecker with many external partners and felt that it was really a great time with with the global focus on One Health to really showcase what is going on in this space in Kenya. So as well as using these three days as a showcase for one health work. We want to use it to dig a bit deeper and start to develop a framework for one health research that is appropriate to the Kenyan context. So we wish to use three days over different topics to identify the initial elements for a demand driven research agenda, which will incorporate aspects of capacity strengthening and really reflect the needs of the policymakers here in in the country, and we'll hear from many of them on day three. So the process as as you're aware from the agenda we will have a combination of keynote speakers we have selected presentations we had a very strong showing of abstracts and submitted to this conference, but we will also utilize audience participation and you'll be introduced later to the Mentimeter a little bit later which will be one of the tools we used to capture all of your thoughts are messages at the end of the conference will be disseminated through a series of blogs on social media and please see our dedicated website. If you want to share any, join in the conversation please tweet, retweet, use these the at Erica underscore ill re and the hashtag K OHC 2021 to join in the conversation. So I would really like to give a huge thanks to our organizing committee representing multiple institutions and one health activities taking place here in Kenya. One's given a huge amount of their value very valuable time to get this off the ground, and a particularly special mention to Nicholas bore Rose Kellan and Jerry Rose menu and Jeffrey and Jenga who have really been a massive powerhouse behind and with that I would just like to thank you and now pass on to our director general of ill read Dr Jimmy Smith to give some welcoming remarks as we kick off this conference. Thank you.