The following support plans will be needed to provide the backing for implementation of the rinderpest contingency plan.
Each country should have legal provisions to ensure that a campaign against rinderpest is rapidly and successfully concluded. Such legislation should be clearly understood by all involved with disease control and should encompass:
Each country should ensure that it has provision for access to emergency funds, budgetary powers and financial resources to cover the cost of dealing with all aspects of a rinderpest emergency.
The main areas of expenditure are:
The farming community can be expected to cooperate only if valuation is fair and compensation for slaughtered stock is paid promptly. National authorities should endeavour to ensure that payments are made at the time of slaughter or soon after.
Each country will be expected to have developed efficient and effective early warning capabilities in the areas of:
All resources required should be documented in detail and arrangements made to ensure their availability.
The officer responsible for maintenance and issue of the materials should be readily available at the local animal disease control centre. This officer's contact address, e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers during and outside office working hours must also be readily available.
Equipment
Each country should have readily available at the
local animal disease control centre or at some
other convenient place the following minimum
equipment for dealing with rinderpest emergency:
• protective clothing;
• disinfectants such as calcium and sodium
hypochlorite or sodium carbonate;
• shovels and scrapers;
• humane killers and ammunition, lethal drugs
ands other approved means of killing animals,
if appropriate;
• necropsy and sampling equipment;
• signposts/warning notices for use in infected
and surveillance zones;
• maps of scale 1:50 000 and 1:10 000;
• vaccination equipment;
• cold chain equipment;
• vehicles;
• digging equipment;
• tracing/epidemiological report forms;
• movement permits.
Diagnostic laboratories
Each national veterinary authority should ensure that it has available at all times the services of a rinderpest diagnostic laboratory either in its own country or elsewhere, such as a regional and/or world reference laboratory for rinderpest.
National rinderpest laboratories should be equipped and skilled to provide a rapid laboratory diagnosis, especially in initial cases of rinderpest. The minimum requirement is to be able to carry out a test for rinderpest by an antigen detection method of high specificity, such as the agar-gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test and the immunocapture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ICE). In addition, the national laboratory should be equipped to carry out competitive ELISA for antibody detection, which is useful for serosurveillance as well as seromonitoring. The laboratory should keep in stock all reagents necessary for rapid initial diagnosis.
In all suspected primary outbreaks, suitable specimens must be collected and packed according to a set procedure. The samples should be quickly transported to the national laboratory. Definite arrangements should be made for dispatch of specimens from the national laboratories to regional and world reference laboratories for rinderest.
All laboratories handling material likely to contain rinderpest virus should operate under internationally acceptable security conditions.
Depending on the strategy selected by the country, the control of a rinderpest outbreak by emergency vaccination may be a primary requirement or may be instituted when the outbreak threatens to become extensive. As part of their contingency plans, countries should establish or have access to facilities for prompt supply of vaccine. Countries may consider maintaining some limited strategic vaccine reserves at the national level sufficient for the initial first round of vaccination. Alternatively, arrangements can be made with neighbouring countries for vaccine banks to be maintained at the regional level, with agreed and documentted drawing rights. Contingency plans for the supply of additional quality-assured vaccines should also be made.
Cold chain facilities should be established for the distribution of vaccines so that they are kept cool, i.e. at 4°C or lower, at all times. The cold chain facilities should be available at the point where vaccine is delivered to a country for further distribution and at or near local disease control centres for distribution to the veterinarians and auxiliary staff who will administer the vaccine.
Refrigerated storage and transport facilities should be available for the distribution of the vaccine in conditions that maintain the viability of the vaccine virus.
Vaccination equipment should be held at national/state centres or at some other convenient place. Sufficient vaccination needles should be stocked, so that each herd can be vaccinated with a fresh unused needle.
Each country should prepare a list of personnel who can be called upon to participate in an emergency vaccination programme.
