Item 7. Report of the Executive Committee on the actions since the 42nd General Session

Item 7. Report of the Executive Committee on the actions since the 42nd General Session

Document provided: Summary paper Executive summary Presentation: Appendix 11

The full Report was provided to the participants to the General Session. A short presentation was given by the EuFMD team, with an introduction by Dr Sumption - with the work relating to Europe, the neighbourhood and the global strategy presented by Maria de La Puente (coordinator of Pillar I), Fabrizio Rosso (Pillar II) and Nick Lyons (Pillar III). Etienne Chevanne managed the transitions between Pillar presentations.

In his opening, the Executive Secretary drew attention to the remarkable eight year freedom from FMD in the European Union, all the more notable given the regional situation. A part of the overall success must be the continuous effort between the agencies as well as the role of the three ”Pillars” of the EuFMD programme in information generation, communication and training for response.

Under Pillar I, there has been a continued high demand for training courses and a strong delivery of e-learning at national level in a variety of European languages. The development of the EuFMDis model, starting with seven countries in Central Europe, brings an exciting new capacity to contingency planning in those countries that can be applied to other diseases as well. The expertise in the member States has also assisted the EuFMD to support countries in the Balkan regions, and Spain and Portugal to run national and regional simulation exercises.

Under Pillar II, the efforts have been intense to assist countries to improve their national FMD control plans and monitoring their effectiveness. The epidemics in North Africa have focused attention on risk pathways from subSaharan Africa to North Africa, and a solid collaboration with CIRAD (France), has assisted to bring livestock movement data into risk mapping in North Africa.

Under Pillar III, the EuFMD is now well integrated into the GF-TADS Global Working Group and has provided strong support to Regional Roadmaps held in East, West, and Central Africa, in the Mid-East, West Eurasia and South Asia. The specific focus upon West Africa and South Asia (agreed at the 42nd General Session) has been important, with over 1000 veterinarians trained through e-learning on FMD investigation. This has probably helped ensure the regional pandemic of type O EA-3 was well tracked as it moved through the whole of West and North Africa in 2018.

Dr Chevanne drew attention to the linkage between the parts of the programme - and how some common issues affect all countries - such as the acute shortage of vaccines to address epidemic or endemic FMD. This issue of “global vaccine security” was the theme of the EuFMD Open Session held in Puglia, Italy in October 2018, with over 250 participants at the meeting and 300 online. The President, Dr Angot, concluded with a summary of the Executive’s effort to support the programme and to communicate with member states, European Commission, REMESA and GF-TADS partners. He thanked the ViceChairs, FAO, OIE and EC for their daily engagement and concluded that the positive FMD health status in Europe at present is therefore something significant that has resulted from this relationship, and is really the achievement of all, and all are to be thanked.

Conclusions

1. The recommendations of the 42nd General Session (2017) have to a large extent been addressed and a very good level of progress made in delivery of the 16 components of the work programme agreed at the previous Session. 2. The Session noted the efficiency of the operational delivery of a large programmes and commended the

Secretariat on this achievement.