Development of a transboundary model of livestock disease in Europe

Abstract

Epidemiological models of notifiable livestock disease are typically framed at a national level and targeted for specific diseases. There are inherent difficulties in extending models beyond national borders as details of the livestock population, production systems and marketing systems of neighbouring countries are not always readily available.It can also be a challenge to capture heterogeneities in production systems, control policies, and response resourcing across multiple countries, in a single transboundary model.In this paper, we describe EuFMDiS, a continental-scale modelling framework for transboundary animal disease, specifically designed to support emergency animal disease planning in Europe. EuFMDiS simulates the spread of livestock disease within and between countries and allows control policies to be enacted and resourced on aThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

What Are the Human Resources Required to Control a Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreak in Austria?

“…EuFMDiS models disease control as a resource-intensive process and a shortage in available personnel can hamper the simulated outbreak response (9). The resource capacity is defined in the EuFMDiS configuration data and is organized into pools of teams for five operational key activities: surveillance, culling, disposal, cleaning and disinfection, and vaccination.…”

“…Resources are returned to the pools once the activity is complete. The model also provides the option of not limiting the pools, i.e., teams are always immediately available upon request (9).…”

“…The surveillance component of EuFMDiS carries out visits to all herds in protection zones and to contact, suspect, and trace herds in surveillance and free zones (9). Surveillance visits are prioritized according to the risk of infection, which depends on the herd classification (e.g., suspect, trace, or contact herd) and the control zones (e.g., protection, surveillance, and free zone).…”

“…Disease spread simulation models provide valuable insights into the dynamics and course of the epidemic, especially in countries that have not recently experienced an FMD outbreak (1)(2)(3)(4)8) such as Austria. In the previous study by Marschik et al (1), the European Simulation Disease Spread Model (EuFMDiS) (9) was used to evaluate the epidemiological and economic impact of a potential FMD outbreak in Austria. According to these estimates, the costs and losses of an FMD outbreak in Austria would range from e 269 million to e 581 million, depending on the region affected and the control measures implemented.…”

“…Only a limited number of FMD simulation models incorporate the human resources component in order to allocate resources for control of an outbreak. Such models, including EuFMDiS, are capable of evaluating whether human resources for operational activities such as surveillance, culling, disposal, and/or vaccination are sufficient to eradicate the epidemic without delay and/or whether additional resources are required (1,6,9). The FMD outbreaks in the United Kingdom (UK) (10), the Netherlands (11), and Japan (12) have identified several critical bottlenecks in resource adequacy [e.g., in number of required staff to perform the operational activities (13)], which were major obstacles in the disease control efforts.…”