34
Good Emergency Management Practice: The Essentials
good market intelligence will indicate which animals and animal products are likely to be in high demand within their country compared with world demand and, in particular, in neighbouring countries. A second common driver is cultural. Human beings crave the foodstuffs they grew up with and will go to great lengths to obtain them. This can lead to the import of either small quantities or large shipments of prohibited materials. These shipments, particularly personal imports, can be targeted by authorities through knowledge of communities who travel to and from their place of origin. Understanding both price and culture drivers requires having a good intelligence system and, in particular, collaboration with veterinary authorities in neighbouring countries and countries with significant shared populations. Intelligence gathering should be maintained for early warning of changes in distribution, virulence or epidemiology in affected countries and trading partners. There should be a section within the veterinary authority tasked with gathering intelligence about disease occurrence in neighbouring countries and trading partners in particular. This can be a separate section, but if the authority has an epidemiology unit (which is strongly recommended) the unit should have sufficient staff so that this can be part of its responsibilities. There are various sources of information about the occurrence of disease. These include the FAO EMPRES-i system, the official disease reporting system (i.e. OIE’s WAHID), WHO, the media, the Internet and others. Embassies in countries also can provide information on the status of a certain number of diseases and this is especially true if there is a veterinary or agricultural attaché. Information from these should be collated and kept over time, and regular updates of the disease situation as it affects the country should be produced – at least once a year and more often when risk of infection appears to have increased.
Developing cross-border contacts with neighbouring administrations Often local veterinarians working on either side of a land border have good unofficial contacts, but communication between the central veterinary authorities is often less close. An essential element of prevention is to have close relations with neighbouring veterinary authorities. This provides several benefits, including: • early warning of disease in neighbouring countries; • harmonization of border activities; • possible exchange of specialist staff during “peacetime” and outbreaks; • shared simulation exercises. There may be the possibility of regional as well as bilateral contacts. There are often regional organizations (e.g. the Southern African Development Coordination Conference in southern Africa, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in South Asia and Organismo Internacional Regional de Sanidad Agropecuaria (i.e. or the International Regional Organization for Agricultural Health) in Central America.
