Prioritization of livestock transboundary diseases in Belgium using a multicriteria decision analysis tool based on drivers of emergence

Abstract

During the past decade, livestock diseases have (re‐)emerged in areas where they had been previously eradicated or never been recorded before. Drivers (i.e. factors of (re‐)emergence) have been identified. Livestock diseases spread irrespective of borders, and therefore, reliable methods are required to help decision‐makers to identify potential threats and try stopping their (re‐)emergence. Ranking methods and multicriteria approaches are cost‐effective tools for such purpose and were applied to prioritize a list of selected diseases (N = 29 including 6 zoonoses) based on the opinion of 62 experts in accordance with 50 drivers‐related criteria. Diseases appearing in the upper ranking were porcine epidemic diarrhoea, foot‐and‐mouth disease, low pathogenic avian influenza, African horse sickness and highly pathogenic avian influenza. The tool proposed uses a multicriteria decision analysis approach to prioritize pathogens according to drivers and can be applied to other countries or diseases.

Improving laboratory diagnostic capacities of emerging diseases using knowledge mapping

“…All rights reserved Table 1. Diagnostic possibilities for the 29 (re)-emerging diseases in Belgium (BE) (according to Bianchini et al, 2020) Except for BTV, epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and vesicular stomatitis (VS) for which Belgium would use qPCR, results confirm that there is at least one OIE prescribed assay in Belgium, for each scenario, taking external partnerships into account.…”

“…This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved Most recent pandemics, such as human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), severe acute respiratory syndrome, and pandemic influenza, are caused by zoonotic pathogens originating from wildlife and for which the emergence was driven by ecological, behavioural, or socioeconomic changes (Morse et al, 2012;Bianchini et al, 2020).…”

“…Two dimensions might be considered to define a lack in diagnostic: missing adequate testing procedure at the hand, availability and preparedness of diagnostic resources when confronted to an epidemic. This study will first review the diagnostic capabilities in Belgium (as an example) for a list of selected (re)emerging -26 viral and 3 bacterial-diseases recently published (Bianchini et al, 2020). It will then use knowledge mapping to visually identify major and minor gaps(s) in diagnostic in frequent epidemiological scenarios.…”

Assessing the use of animal health platforms: user’s needs, preferences and constraints

“…Both people and animals can travel long distances in a very short time. These socio-economic changes have led to an increase in the emergence and spread of new and known infectious diseases affecting animals and humans (Bianchini et al, 2020). Consequently, infectious animal diseases have entered new frontiers, emerging in countries for the first time, as seen with the recent outbreaks like African swine fever (Linden et al, 2019), Lumpy skin disease (Bréard, 2016) and West Nile fever (Sambria et al, 2013) in different European countries.…”

“…Efficient decision-making on risk management of animal disease threats requires knowledge of which disease poses the highest threat and should therefore receive more attention (Bianchini et al, 2020;Humblet et al, 2012). This ensures that policy makers and researchers allocate adequate resources for the prevention and surveillance of human and animal diseases.…”