Training veterinarians and other animal health staff

eases, and for fostering ‘ownership’ and support for emergency disease-control/eradication campaigns from livestock farmers and other key stakeholders. It also engenders a ‘bottom up’ approach to planning and implementation of disease-control programmes, to complement the more traditional ‘top down’ approach adopted by governments.

The communication strategies should aim to make stakeholders aware of the nature and potential consequences of transboundary and emerging animal diseases and of the benefits to be derived from their prevention and eradication. Furthermore, they should always have an element of rallying the community to the common cause of preventing and fighting a disease epidemic. Ideally, this should result in farmer sanitary defence groups and farmer organizations.

One of the important messages to get across is that it is essential to notify and seek help from the nearest government animal health official as soon as an unusual animal disease outbreak is seen (and how to do so). Publicity campaigns should be directed towards farmers, local authorities and livestock traders.

Livestock traders/dealers/marketers are important target groups for public awareness campaigns and are often overlooked. The movement of animals through livestock traders is often a key epidemiological factor in the spread of epidemic livestock diseases. The need for building up a climate of trust and confidence between animal health officials and livestock traders is as important as that discussed for farmers. The general themes for emergency disease awareness should be similar, although emphasis should be placed on the importance of doing the ‘right thing’ about sourcing animals from disease-free areas where possible, not buying any sick stock or selling stock from groups where some have been sick, following any rules about quarantine, vaccination, testing or identification of animals, and the keeping of records. The potential consequences of the occurrence of a disease for internal and international trade should be emphasized.

traInIng veterInarIans and other anImal health staff

In many countries, including developing countries, it is likely that very few veterinarians or other animal health workers in either the public or private sector will have had any direct, first-hand experience with transboundary or other emergency animal diseases, because these diseases may never have occurred in the country or may have been absent for a considerable period of time. This deficiency needs to be rectified by a systematic training programme for all those who, in their professional capacity, may be the first to come into contact with an incursion or outbreak of such a disease. Because a disease may strike in any part of the country and because of staff turnovers, training programmes should be both comprehensive and regular. This training must extend to staff in the remotest parts of the country.

Obviously, it will neither be practical nor necessary to train personnel to a high level of expertise in these diseases, their risk or response management. In most cases, it is sufficient that trainees be familiarized with the basic clinical, pathological and epidemiological features of risk diseases and about what they need to do if they suspect one of these diseases. Perhaps the most important thing to establish in people is a ‘mind-set’ that if they are confronted by an unusual disease outbreak, either in the field or in the diagnostic laboratory, they should include emergency diseases in the range of their differential diag-