Item 2b FMD control: epidemiology, surveillance and control measures: focus on epidemic incursions

areas and International Veterinary Health Certificates are issued only for such products. Recording and identification of large ruminants started in September 2001.

Dr Sungur took this opportunity to congratulate Dr Keith Sumption on his new position as Secretary of the EUFMD. He assured the meeting that Turkey will continue to contribute to the future studies in the field of FMD epidemiology, diagnosis and vaccine production to the best of its ability.

On closing, Dr Sungur thanked all the participants for attending this meeting and wished the meeting success. He hoped that the participants would find some time during the very tight schedule of the meeting at least to benefit from Çesme, one of the most attractive tourist regions of Turkey.

Dr Keith Sumption once again took the floor and on behalf of FAO conveyed the apologies of Mr Doumandji, the FAO Representative in Turkey, who at the last minute, was unable to attend.

He recalled the long history and good relationships of the Government of Turkey with the EUFMD Commission, which is recognised by FAO. The work undertaken over many years has been very important in reducing the risk of FMD introduction into other member states of EUFMD. FAO recognises the efforts of the Turkish Authorities to promote animal health and disease control in the Eurasian region. The cooperation between Turkey and Iran through a FAO TCP project, may be followed by further cooperative transboundary disease actions. The involvement of a Turkish expert in an EC funded expert mission to Iran scheduled in October is a good sign of this. The expertise, experience and regional position of Turkey should be of great importance to the regional FMD control programme. FAO also recognises the efforts made by the Government of Turkey in the Tripartite action (EUFMD, EC and OIE) involving 3 countries in the southern Balkans (Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria). This work is ongoing and important for EUFMD members. The joint application for a TCP project involving these 3 countries has been submitted to FAO and it is hoped that approval will be given in order to begin activities in 2002.

On closing, in his capacity as the new Secretary of the EUFMD he thanked everybody for their warm welcome into the Commission and is honoured to be able to work in support of the Research Group. He reminded the meeting of the importance of the Research Group to the Commission as this Group represents a very significant proportion of the research-active FMD scientists in the world. In addition, the Sessions of the Research Group are not only scientific conferences since the recommendations of the meetings feed back to the CVOs of the 33 Member States of the EUFMD for scientific guidance.

The floor was given to Dr Kris De Clercq, Chairman of the Research Group, who on behalf of the Group welcomed all to the meeting. He thanked the Turkish Authorities for the excellent organization of the meeting. Most participants will know how much work goes into preparing such a meeting, especially with such a high number of participants and the hard work is much appreciated. He pointed out that at the RG level the collaboration with the SAP FMD Institute is good. The information received from the laboratory is of the utmost importance to the RG.

In the Session of the Research Group held in Borovets in 2000, nobody had any idea of the events which took place in 2001 which were to change the world. Not only did 2001 bring

back FMD but also the event which took place on 11 September created a possible tool for agro-terrorism. Many meetings, one of which was held in FAO HQs in February, were held on this in 2001 and 2002. As an outcome of these many meetings, our diagnostics were debated, especially the NSP test and more generally the validation of tests. We will consequently have to focus on the urgent development of reference sera which cannot be done by one laboratory alone. Therefore, a closer network of laboratories will have to be established in the near future. EUFMD will surely play a major role in this. Other important items were slaughter policy and vaccines which will also be presented at this meeting. On the subject of vaccines, Dr De Clercq will inform the meeting of progress made in 2001/02 concerning the Eur.Pharm. and other documents established by EMEA and OIE.

The year 2002 brought other changes to the Commission. Dr Yves Leforban left his position as Secretary to return to France. He acted as Secretary for a period of 8 years during which he did an outstanding job. The position was taken up by Dr Keith Sumption as of 1 September 2002. Dr De Clercq extended a warm welcome to the new Secretary.

Dr De Clercq presented individually each member of the Research Group present to the meeting and presented apologies from Drs Moutou and Sanchez-Vizcaino who were unable to attend.

Dr De Clercq then gave the floor to Prof. Reinhard Ahl, Chairman of the Sub-Committee of Animal Health of the Scientific Committee for Animal Health and Welfare of the EU Commission in Brussels.

Professor Ahl conveyed the regards of the Committee to the participants and organisers of this meeting. He pointed out that a number of questions had arisen from the recent epidemics of FMD in different parts of the world which in part, are difficult to solve by experimental studies alone, since the introduction of FMD cannot be predicted with complete certainty. New experience may lead to resolving some of the problems, but he indicated that we should be aware of the limit to our science.

Adoption of the Agenda

The Chairman proposed that the following Agenda should be adopted.

Item 1: Information on current FMD situation in the world and reports on outbreaks Item 2a: FMD control: epidemiology, surveillance, control measures: focus on endemic zones Item 2b: FMD control: epidemiology, surveillance and control measures: focus on epidemic incursions Item 3: Pathogenicity and transmission Item 4: Virus characterisation Item 5: Diagnostics - virus detection Item 6: Diagnostics - antibody detection Item 7: FMD vaccines and vaccination Item 8: Closed Session

The Agenda was adopted as proposed.

Item 1: Information on current FMD situation in the world and reports on Outbreaks

Dr David Paton, representing the World Reference Laboratory (WRL), gave a brief overview of the global FMD situation (Appendix 1). Foot-and-mouth disease remains endemic in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America. Since there is limited reporting, our picture of the disease situation worldwide is incomplete. So far in 2002, 103 viruses from 17 countries were submitted to the WRL for analysis. Type O was received from 13 countries, type A from 4 countries, type Asia 1 from 3 countries, whereas SAT 2 was received from 1 country. These figures compare with 179 viruses received from 29 countries in 2001.

He presented molecular epidemiological studies (Appendix 2) showing that in the last few years, a succession of different type A viruses have been recorded in Iran and Iraq. A group of Iranian viruses from 2001 fall in a unique phylogenetic cluster with a position intermediate to the European/South American, and Indian/Middle Eastern topotypes. Two Iraqi isolates from 2002 form a new lineage within the Iran96 topotype. For these groups, as well as A22-like Iranian viruses from 2000, there appear to be few suitable vaccine strains.

Dr Patrick O’Reilly described the way FMD was introduced into Ireland (Appendix 3). He summarised aspects of FMD diagnosis, control, eradication and serosurveillance in Ireland during 2001.

Mr Nigel Ferris described the enormous number of samples that had to be processed in the Pirbright laboratory (UK) which severely taxed the laboratory resources, and highlights the need for contingency planning (Appendix 4). Laboratory-based methods to confirm clinical diagnoses for secondary cases were too slow. This caused problems, particularly for diagnosing the disease in sheep, which may not become obviously ill.

Clinical and laboratory investigations by staff from the Institute for Animal Health (IAH), Pirbright, of five foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks during the early stages of the UK 2001 epidemic were described by Dr Soren Alexandersen (Appendix 5). He discussed the epidemiology of these cases with emphasis on the appearance of clinical signs, the incubation periods, the role of airborne transmission, and their temporal and spatial links.

A description and some provisional analyses of the epidemic in South West Scotland, were given by Dr Michael Thrusfield (Appendix 6). The traditional control techniques (slaughter of infected premises and dangerous contacts, and patrolling) were implemented rapidly throughout the epidemics course, although the novel extent of the pre-emptive cull competed detrimentally for scarce resources. The estimated dissemination rate dropped below the value of one by the third week of March (before pre-emptive culling began). Three smaller peaks in the epidemic curve followed this date, but were caused by “sparks” some distance from the initial focus. This highlights the dangers of interpreting simple summary parameters, such as the estimated dissemination rate, outside their geographical context.

Conclusions

• The detection, in the Middle East, of new type A strains that are poorly covered by existing vaccine strains gives reason for concern. Any military conflict could exacerbate this risk.