National Animal Disease Emergency- Control and Management

Animal disease emergencies are significant public health component which might occur in a major outbreak of a zoonotic diseases. For these emergencies well developed framework should be developed for implementing disease control and eradication programmes and for sharing responsibilities among those departments and agencies without involvement of which this plan cannot be completed. Appropriate opportunities for sharing resources among departments and agencies should be explored to avoid duplication. Utmost important is development of coordinated and efficient mechanisms for the rapid exchange of emergency disease reports and other key epidemiological information among agencies. There should be well developed communication mechanism between local, regional and national level offices among all agencies involved in this programme.

In order to have adequate preparedness sufficient funding and resources should be allocated to these activities. The head of this programme should enlist the support of all required parties which must be involved in this programme. These parties may involve senior ministry officials, other government departments and agencies including national economic development planning authorities, farming communities and organisations, livestock marketing authorities, livestock traders and exporters and livestock product processors along with veterinary department. During preparation of this plan identification of risks of disease and other animal health emergency and analysis of those risks should be done along with socio-economic consequences of epidemic of disease.

For this a planning committee must be appointed at national level. This committee should work on following points:

1. Risk assessment from disease threats
2. Appointment of drafting teams for preparation, monitoring, approval of plan and another document.
3. Identification of relevant departments, organisations which can contribute in desired plan.
4. Enhancement of capabilities of emergency veterinary services and laboratory veterinary services.
5. Development of active disease surveillance, epidemiological analysis capability and emergency reporting system.
6. Staff training and farmer awareness programme.
7. Assessment of resources available and planning of their provision during animal health emergency.
8. Drafting of financial plans.
9. Overall monitoring of national state for preparedness for animal health emergency.

After approval of animal disease emergency plan, a set of standard operating procedure should be prepared. This plan should describe how to proceed if nation faces any health emergency, also this plan should describe duties and functions of different departments and agencies.

Organisation of veterinary services during an animal disease emergency programme
Veterinary animal services must be placed in command for the duration of animal disease emergency. National veterinary services should be structured in such a way so as to optimize activities like endemic disease control, veterinary public health, quarantine etc. There must be organization of following points well in advance of any emergency:

1. Answerability of specific person who will be head of plan
2. An agreement with regional authorities that their own veterinary staff will come under line management of animal health emergency response programme.
3. All veterinary diagnostic laboratories will come under line management of animal health emergency response programme.
4. Agreement of utilization of private sector veterinary organisations during emergency.

National Animal Disease control Centre
At national level national animal disease control must be developed and the responsibilities of this centre during emergency include:

1. Implementing of the disease control policies decided by head of plan.
2. Directing and monitoring of the operations of local animal disease control centres which are: –
3. Maintenance of up to date lists of available personnel and other resources.
4. Deployment of local staff and other resources to the local centres
5. Ordering and dispersing of vaccines and other essential supplies
6. Monitoring the progress of campaign
7. Maintenance of up to date lists and contact details of risk enterprises.
8. Liaison with other groups involved in emergency response.
9. Preparation of reports at appropriate time
10. Management of farmer awareness and general publicity programmes
11. General administration including keeping of records

Local Animal Disease Control Centres
During emergency one or more local animal disease control centres should be set up within easy reach of infected zones of the disease outbreak. The local animal disease control centre should be fully equipped with offices, meeting halls, communication equipment to contact both personnel and National Animal Disease Control Centre, vehicles and fully stocked central store. This centre should be under senior field veterinary officer and this officer should be given the responsibility for directing the emergency disease control and eradication programme within area under supervision of National Animal Disease control Centre. This officer in charge should be given authority to:

1. Designate a farm, community as an infected premise when necessary
2. Quarantine infected and dangerous contact premises.
3. Send surveillance teams to places where susceptible livestock.
4. Deploy necessary staff to infected premises
5. Impose livestock movement restrictions
6. Suspend operations of livestock markets, abattoirs and other risk enterprises.
7. Organize and implement vaccination programme
8. Carry out insect vector control programme when necessary
9. Liaise with police for maintenance of disease control restrictions
10. Carry out publicity campaigns
11. Liaise with local wild life authorities.

The local disease control centre should be allocated with sufficient staff to carry out these functions.

Risk Analysis
Risk analysis is a tool that can be used for the betterment during Animal disease emergency preparedness planning. It comprises of three components.

1. Risk Assessment
2. Risk management
3. Risk Communication

Risk Assessment
In this component possible risks during particular course of action are identified and described. Then likelihood of these risks occurrence and their potential consequences is evaluated. Risks can be assessed in a quantified, semi quantified or qualitative way.

Risk management
this is a process of identifying, documenting and implementing measures to reduce risks and their consequences.

Risk Communication
This is a process of exchange of information and options on risk between risk analysts and stakeholders.

The risk assessment component is best carried out by central epidemiological unit in the national veterinary headquarters as a part of the national early warning system. After completing this component most important step is to assess the seriousness of the threat of entry of each disease to the country and identify the routes of mechanisms by which it may enter. The following questions in this context are raised:

1. Current geographical distribution and incidence of disease in world
2. Is disease being present in nearby countries
3. Is there any past history of introduction of disease in country?
4. How is the disease spread?
5. Are there significant imports of potential risk animal species of material
6. Are there smuggling, unofficial livestock movements or nomadic practices.

The next step is to evaluate how serious the socio-economic consequences with inclusion of disease. Questions to be raised include:

1. Is there any susceptible animal host population, insect vector species in country?
2. Will it be difficult to recognise disease in different part of country?
3. How large the population of livestock in country?
4. How important the population to the national economy?
5. How serious will be production loss from the disease
6. What will be effect of disease in country on export trade of animal and animal products
7. Will disease cause human illness or death
8. Will disease cause declination of wild life?
9. How difficult and costly will be to control and eradicate disease

Early Warning Contingency Planning
Early warning is the rapid detection of the introduction or sudden increase in any disease of livestock which has the potential of developing epidemic proportion or causing serious economic consequences or public health concerns. This component mainly includes disease surveillance.

Disease surveillance
Disease surveillance is important for early weaning of diseases, planning and monitoring of disease control programmes. There are two type of approaches which are adopted for disease surveillance.

Passive Disease Surveillance
This is the routine gathering of information on disease incidents from sources like request of assistance from farmers, reports from veterinary and livestock officers, submission of diagnostic specimens to laboratories and their results.

Active Disease Surveillance
It requires purposeful and comprehensive searching for evidence of disease in animal population. The components of active surveillance are:

1. Close integration between the activities of field and laboratory veterinary services.
2. Regular visits to farming communities for farmer interviews about diseases.
3. Participatory rural appraisal programmes for epidemiological evaluation of specific diseases
4. Utilization of disease information from all potential sources in public and private sector.
5. Periodic targeted serological surveys in animal populations.

Emergency Disease reporting And Information Systems

Emergency Disease reporting
This is one of the most important components of preparatory plans. In case of emergency report on disease outbreak, the basic information needs to be conveyed is:

1. The disease suspected
2. The exact geographical location of disease outbreak
3. The name and address of affected farms and villages
4. Livestock species affected
5. Approximate number of sick and dead animals
6. Brief description of clinical signs and lesions
7. Date when the disease first noticed
8. Details of any recent movement of susceptible animal
9. Initial disease control actions taken

Emergency Disease Information System
Disease information system should be two-way flow of information between national veterinary headquarters, government veterinary diagnostic laboratories and regional veterinary offices. This will result in efficient monitoring of the progress of disease eradication or control programmes. The following type of information may be included in emergency disease information system:

1. Results of field clinical and serological surveillance.
2. Exact geographical locations of infected farms.
3. Date of start of infection, number of sick animals and dead animals, diagnostic specimens collected.
4. Result of laboratory investigations
5. Locations of quarantined areas and infected zones.
6. Data related to the implementation and progress of vaccination campaigns.
7. Disposition and availability of essential human and physical resources.

Training Programmes
Training programme which should be given to field veterinarians is must but these trainings should not be highly specialised. In these training veterinarians must be given knowledge about basic clinical, pathological and epidemiological features of risk diseases. They should be trained for collection and transport of diagnostic specimens, and in immediate disease control actions. More specific trainings are needed for those persons who are nominated as members of specialist diagnostic teams.

Farmer Programmes and other publicity campaigns
It is a neglected but utmost component of this programme. The communication strategies of these programmes should aim to make stakeholders aware of the nature and potential consequences of important livestock disease and of the benefits to be derived from their prevention and eradication. Livestock farmers and livestock traders must be included in training programmes and publicity campaigns regarding important points to be taken care during national animal disease emergency.

Specialist Diagnostic Teams
It is recommended that specialist diagnostic teams be ready to be mobilized when there is a report from the field of a suspected emergency animal disease. The Diagnostic team should include:

1. A veterinary pathologist from central or regional veterinary diagnostic laboratory.
2. A specialist epidemiologist
3. A veterinarian with extensive experience of endemic diseases in the target livestock species.
4. Any specialist required for special examinations.

Laboratory diagnostic capabilities
The rapid and accurate diagnosis of diseases can only be assured in fully equipped laboratories that have a range of standardized diagnostic reagents, experienced staff to complete these operations.

Early Reaction Contingency Panning
This activity should be started without any delay to eliminate the disease and infection with in shortest time. This component includes:

Preventing the Entry of Exotic Animal Diseases
With aim to eliminate disease as early as possible quarantine process is considered as one of the most important function of government services. Exotic disease can be introduced through entry of infected animals, germplasm, contaminated animal products or vaccines, migrating animals and birds or even by natural spread of insects, vectors or by wind currents.

Quarantine Programme should include

1. International border control to prevent uncontrolled entry of animals, animal products and other potentially dangerous goods.
2. Quarantine conditions should be negotiated with exporting countries for safe importation of animals, germplasm and animal products.
3. Quarantine inspection of people and goods arriving at international airports and seaports

General Principles of Epidemic livestock disease control And Eradication

1. Applying good hygiene and sanitary practices when handling livestock.
2. Removing potentially contaminated material from the environment by disinfection, destruction or safe disposal.
3. Preventing the feeding of contaminated material to livestock.

Other important steps for this purpose are denying accees of the disease agent to susceptible host, main points to be taken care of are following: —

Avoiding Contact between Infected and Susceptible Animals
This can be achieved by:

1. Quarantining of infected farms or area. Ban on movement of susceptible species into or out of quarantine area. Restriction may be placed on movement of people.
2. Restriction of movement of contaminated animal products.
3. Ban of movement of susceptible animals in livestock markets.

Removing Infected and Potentially Infected Animals
Susceptible animals in infected area should be immediately slaughtered and their carcass should be disposed safely. Then there should be cleaning and disinfection of infected premises.

Reducing the Number of Susceptible Animals
In this approach by vaccination of susceptible animals is done. Vaccination may be done selectively, either by ring vaccination or blanket vaccination depending on the nature of disease or vaccine availability. The aim of this method is to reduce the level of infection to an acceptable low level.

Reducing Access of Vectors to susceptible Animals
In case of insect borne diseases, large scale insecticide spraying can be done but it is costly and in long term environmentally unacceptable. Other methods are to treat susceptible animals with long acting insecticide during critical period.

This approach should also be implemented in remote areas. It should be also taken care that contact of susceptible wild and domestic animals should be limited. Steps should be taken to avoid contamination by wild birds. It is also necessary to mount ring or blanket vaccination programme for livestock in those areas where infection in wildlife constitutes a continuing threat.

Zooning
The proclamation of specific geographical area in which specific disease control strategies are to carried out. The nature of activities carried out in each zone are dependent on the particular disease control strategy. However, combination of eradication and vaccination strategies where there may be doubt of strict quarantine.

Contingency Plans
Countries need to have well placed contingency plans for emergency diseases. They also need to have resource and financial plans.

Technical Contingency Plans
These should consist of four sets of complementary documents:

1. Document describing strategies to be followed in order to detect, contain and eliminate the disease.
2. Standard operative procedures which are common for several emergency disease campaigns.
3. Manuals having guidelines for enterprises that may be involved in an emergency animal disease outbreak.
4. Simple job description cards for individual officers.

The format of disease contingency plan should be framed in such a way that it meets all the requirements and circumstances of country. This plan should involve details of:

1. Nature of disease
2. Risk management including potential circumstances
3. Diagnosis and surveillance
4. Principles of control and eradication
5. Policy and rationale.
6. Appendixes

Standard Operative Procedure
These are detailed sets of instructions and activities that tend to be generic rather than disease specific. These may be prepared for:

1. Organisation and operation of the national disease control centre.
2. Organisation and operation of the local disease control centre
3. Emergency disease reporting and information system
4. Laboratory diagnosis and surveillance
5. field diagnosis and surveillance
6. Zoning
7. Quarantine and livestock movement control
8. Livestock destruction and disposal of carcasses
9. Cleaning and disinfection
10. Planning and performance of vaccination programmes
11. Valuation and compensation
12. Extension and public awareness campaigns

Enterprise Manuals
These are set of instructions for enterprises in disease emergency.

Job description Cards
these are simple lists of roles, duties and responsibilities which are distributed to the personnel involved in disease contingency emergency plans.

Supportive Plans
These include:

1. Financial plans:Delay in finance is a major constraint in rapid response to emergency disease outbreak. These plans need to be developed which provide Contingency fund to disease emergency immediately.
2. Resource Plans: For preparing this type of plan need to make resource inventory, listing of resources that will be needed to respond to a high priority emergency disease. This includes personnel, equipment and other physical resources.
3. Simulation Exercises: these are extremely useful for testing and refining contingency plans in advance of any disease emergency. They are also a valuable means of building terms for emergency disease responses and for training individual staff.
4. Training: All staff should be thoroughly trained in their roles, duties and responsibilities in a disease emergency. More intensive training will need to be given to those who will be in key position.

Contingency plans should not be treated as static documents but should be regularly updated as warranted by changing circumstances.