2020 OPEN SESSION OF THE STANDING TECHNICAL COMMITTEE OF THE EUFMD
Session 1-PM: Measuring animal movements and drivers for FAST disease risk mapping Chair: Prof. James Wood; Moderator: Dr Bouda AhmadiVosough Summary In the afternoon session, the five presentations focused on the use of participative methods to gather and integrate the type of livestock movements data that are most appropriate, their current limitations and how they can be used in FAST control and surveillance. In his keynote presentation Dr Valdano, INSERM, presented a collaborative platform using a “bring the code to the data” approach to perform an analysis of animal mobility in settings where data confidentiality and regulations prevent data availability and sharing is an issue. This has allowed his research group to identify a set of indicators that can predict the vulnerability of a specific national market to the spatial spread of a wide range of infections and can be integrated into monitoring policies, with minimal data sharing requirements. Dr Squarzoni-Diaw, Cirad, presented a participative qualitative risk assessment framework to detect hotspots for risk of introduction and spread of TADs on a national scale, discussing the factors and parameters that are currently imputed in the model and highlighting the importance of expert opinion for data generation when such information is not available. Dr Wanyoike, ILRI, emphasized the complexity of the pastoralism and transhumance systems in SubSaharan Africa, characterized by high mobility of both animals and herders. Pastoralism is an important adaptation and ecological management mechanism for pastoralist communities, which is likely to be increasingly affected by climate change and rising demand for livestock products, generating also increased risks for the spread of FAST diseases. Dr Aguanno, FAO, noted that most of the outcomes of studies related to animal movement patterns conducted by academic authors, might not incorporate the priorities of surveillance system actors or communicate results to relevant stakeholders, highlighting the need for improving the translation of research into action. He presented a market profiling and animal movement tool - Epidemiology Value Chain (EVC) – using participatory mapping of animal mobility patterns through open-source electronic collection systems (e.g.EpiCollect5). This would allow the national veterinary services to integrate data on value chain locations and movement patterns. Dr Vidondo, University of Bern, presented a study using cattle transport networks for the design of an early-warning system of infectious disease outbreaks in Switzerland. It highlighted how animal surveillance systems would greatly benefit from the use of animal transport data. By comparing a sentinel surveillance scheme based on markets to one based on farms, she reported that the former approaches at livestock markets could be tailored to complement existing farm risk-based and syndromic surveillance approaches.
17
