WORKSHOPS

SADC Directors of Veterinary Services and Chief Veterinary Officers' Workshop

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have noted unprecedented outbreaks of major transboundary animal diseases (TADs) in the last five years. Consequently the Chief Veterinary Officers (CVOs) held a workshop from 21 to 22 July 2003 in Pretoria, South Africa to define the most pressing needs for assistance; the workshop was funded by FAO project TCP/RAF/2809 - “Control of foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease and other TADs in southern Africa”.

With the facilitation of an international consultant, the CVOs reviewed the EMPRES precepts, namely early warning, early reaction, enabling research and international coordination, and the relevant tools developed to empower the CVOs.

They categorized TADs for the southern African region as follows.

Strategic - FMD and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP).
Tactical - African swine fever (ASF), Rift Valley fever (RVF), Newcastle disease (NCD), lumpy skin disease (LSD).
Emerging/exotic to the southern African region - rinderpest, peste des petits ruminants (PPR), bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI).

They will be seeking internal and donor funding for progressive control of the strategic TADs with a plan that spans 16 years.

The CVOs proposed two phases to address the FMD and CBPP problems in the SADC region:

The emergency needs

For FMD, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi face emergency needs to undertake various actions including quality vaccination, repair of fencing, surveillance, movement control, buffalo segregation and molecular epidemiological investigations of buffalo viral strains.
The CBPP emergency needs for Angola, the western province of Zambia, southern Tanzania, eastern Zambia and Malawi are vaccination, surveillance and movement control.

The medium-term/recovery needs

FMD serotypes SAT 1, 2, 3, O and A. Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, Newcastle disease, African swine fever, Rift Valley fever and lumpy skin disease were listed as the major TADs in the region, while concern about BSE and avian influenza was also expressed. Weaknesses include institutional limitations that are derived from economic impediments, inability to monitor animal movement control, land ownership rights, wild buffalo ranching and inadequate or insufficient epidemiological data for strategy design. Furthermore, universities and research establishments are not involved in strategic issues for national veterinary services and in undertaking programmed enabling research; nor are they included in developing a coherent regional livestock development policy.

Inadequate regional coordination poses a problem. There is also an uncertain vision beyond the cordon fences - the long-term vision in this regard needs to be elaborated. With the increasing interest in buffalo ranching, there is a pressing need to establish a code of conduct on good buffalo farming practices at the legislative and practical levels.

Participants at the SADC Directors of Veterinary Services and Chief Veterinary Officers' Workshop, Pretoria, South Africa, July 2003-PHOTO: W. UNGERER

The concept of epidemiological clusters was described and discussed with the following synopsis by the CVOs.

FMD clusters

FMD endemic in livestock - Angola and the United Republic of Tanzania.
Sporadic FMD cluster - Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, northern Botswana and northern Namibia.
Freedom without vaccination - areas of Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Seychelles and Mauritius.

CBPP clusters

Primary endemic - Angola and northern Tanzania.
Sporadic/secondary endemic - northern Namibia, Zambia, southern Tanzania and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Free but at immediate risk - southern Namibia, northern Botswana, northwest Zimbabwe, Malawi and northern Mozambique.
Free and at lower risk - South Africa, southern Botswana, rest of Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, southern Mozambique, Mauritius and Seychelles.

The outcome of the working group's discussions was summarized as follows.

Scientific support for effective prevention and progressive control of FMD, CBPP and other major TADs in SADC. The group identified the concept of primary laboratory consortia in order to assist with confirmatory diagnosis and characterization of causal agents. The consortia proposed are:

primary laboratory consortia for FMD, formed by EDD-OVI (Onderstepoort), BVI-NVL (Gaborone), CVRL (Harare) and ADRI-CVL (Temeke);
primary laboratory consortia for CBPP, formed by CVL (Windhoek), OVI, BVI, CVRI (Balmoral) and ADRI-CVL (Temeke).

All countries should aim at securing access to a laboratory, either national or regional, for undertaking primary diagnosis. The need for closer collaboration between BVI and OVI for characterization and identification of candidate vaccine strains was highlighted.

The disease management and coordination group affirmed that FMD and CBPP were the diseases of strategic importance and a 16-year programme for entering into the OIE pathways to freedom from these diseases must be developed. The group also proposed the establishment of a Southern African Commission on TADs.
The diseases group dealing with the tactical diseases linked to food security problems and the occurrence of TADs in short-cycle animals (swine and poultry) recommended that surveillance and control efforts be concentrated on NCD and ASF as well as proving freedom from BSE to stem the concern for beef exports.

In conclusion, the 16-year programme is to address the following.

proper assessments of national importance of livestock and the economic impact of TADs;
basic epidemiological studies in emergency areas to understand better the dynamics of the diseases and plan their control;
preparation of national and regional contingency plans and appropriate coordination mechanisms;
preparation of a draft proposal for the emergency control of FMD and CBPP in the SADC region;
preparation of a concept note for the regional framework for the progressive control of FMD and other major TADs in SADC, as part of the FAO/OIE GF-TADs initiative (see following pages of this issue);
formation of a Southern African Commission for the Control of TADs.