MECANISMO DE ASIGNACION DE COUNTERS PARA COMPAÑIAS AEREAS

system operated by the OIE. This system receives official reports of notifiable diseases from member countries, and makes this information available for other countries.

• The FAO’s Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) programme operates the Global Animal Disease Information System14 (EMPRES-i), another web based information system. Unlike WAHIS, EMPRES-i receives data from a number of sources, including official reports, local feedback from non-government organisations and personal contacts.

• A more recent initiative, the Global Early Warning System15 _{(GLEWS) com-}

bines information from the two above mentioned systems with information on human disease sourced through the World Health Organisation—this is valuable for animal health as for some zoonoses human disease may be detec- ted earlier than animal cases, thus improving the sensitivity of the detection system.

• Disease bioportal 16_{is a website that aggregates information from a range of}

sources, allowing greater sensitivity and offers a range of tools for analysing selected data.

These systems provide a great deal of data on animal diseases, and provide a tool for monitoring at a general level. However, for this research a number of key issues limit their usefulness. First, under section 1.1.3 of the Terrestrial Animal Health Code (World Organisation for Animal Health, 2010a), countries only report endemic dis- eases to WAHIS under specific conditions such as change in epidemiology. For most of the countries in the GMS FMD is assumed to be a constant presence, and apart from the occasional change of serotype or topotype does not warrant reporting to WAHIS. Second, information collected from non-official sources provides difficulties

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Public interface available at http://www.oie.int/wahid 14 http://empres-i.fao.org/ 15 http://www.glews.net/ 16 http://fmdbioportal.ucdavis.edu/

in interpretation, and is often likely to be incomplete. This limits the usefulness of value-adding systems such as EMPRES-i for statistical analysis. Third, these systems are in general terms part of a monitoring system—they are not directly as- sociated with a disease control programme—and so standards of data collection and verification may be inconsistent between countries. Salman (2003) cautions against using such data for comparisons between countries. Instead, he recommends data sourced as part of a surveillance system associated with a disease control programme. Luckily, for FMD such a disease control programme exists.

FMD was identified as the number one priority disease at a symposium coordinated by OIE and the Federation of Asian Veterinary Associations in 1990. Subsequent to this, with the support of ASEAN and the governments of Switzerland, Australia and Japan, in 1997 a Regional Coordination Unit (RCU) for the South-East Asia foot and mouth disease (SEAFMD)17 _{campaign was established (Gleeson, 2002).}

The OIE coordinates the campaign from the Bangkok sub-regional office. The RCU undertakes a number of activities (grouped into eight core programme areas) aimed at supporting and facilitating the advancement of a control programme in SEA. The progress of the RCU has led to it being hailed as a successful model for the implementation of cooperative regional disease control programs, including strong support from all OIE member nations.

It was intended that control of this programme would be assumed by ASEAN. Although this was intended to have happened by 2004 (Gleeson, 2002) at the time of writing this thesis arrangements for the ongoing funding have not been satisfactorily established (a trust fund has been created to fund the ongoing operations however at this stage there is insufficient capital in the fund to generate adequate financial return). The programme continues to rely heavily on cash support and donations from Australia and New Zealand (Abila, 2010), and in-kind and staff support from the OIE, European Union and France, amongst other donors.

17_{In 2010 China officially became a part of the programme, and the name has subsequently} become the South-East Asia and China foot and mouth disease campaign (SEACFMD)

2.4. SOURCES OF OUTBREAK DATA 27 Forman and Leslie (1997) identified clearly that the implementation of widespread control programmes was of doubtful value in light of the then poor understanding of the disease prevalence and economic impacts. Through an investigation in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam they identified the following core activities as a priority for regional coordination:

• Epidemiologic and economic studies • Diagnostic laboratory support • Training and education

• Disease control activities

• Development of detailed national plans

Although recognising that all three countries would require support in the form of external funds, the report did not discuss the importance of high-level political will to commit to large scale disease control programmes. As well as these, a major focus of RCU activities has been on strengthening disease surveillance and reporting from member countries, including a focus on transparency and consistency. Underreport- ing is a well recognised problem for analysts when it comes to reporting endemic disease. Internationally there is no requirement to report routine outbreaks of en- demic disease in any way other than a single six monthly or annual figure to the OIE18_{(Ben Jebara and Shimshony, 2006; Sumption et al., 2008; World Organisation}

for Animal Health, 2010a).

The RCU is improving consistency by maintaining a database of FMD outbreaks re- ported by participating countries. Since 2007 the management of this database has been integrated with ARAHIS. As mentioned above, the RCU has invested substan- tial effort in improving reporting consistency. To effect this they have developed a case definition for an outbreak of FMD to be reported to the SEAFMD programme office (Bouchot, 2010). The definition is paraphrased below as the analysis of data collected by SEACFMD forms a major part of this work.

“A foot and mouth disease outbreak is the occurrence of FMD in one or more animals in a farm, or village, or group sharing a common area (e.g. pastureland, watering point, slaughterhouse, market etc.). All cases occurring within 2 weeks of the previous case are considered as part of the same outbreak.”

This definition has attracted some criticism for lacking specificity, and most certainly would not be suitable for a disease eradication campaign. For example, it should contain more detail about what clinical signs or laboratory confirmation is required to define ‘the occurrence of FMD’. However, it is suitable for managing a control programme over the wide range of cultures, animal husbandry styles and resource capacities of the programme member nations.

The data from the ARAHIS is the only coherent and consistent data on FMD out- breaks available across the GMS. For the purpose of this thesis, it will form the basis for identifying the risk of animal infection prior to undertaking a movement.