oral presentation at ISVEE

Through its Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) in Indonesia together with the Directorate of Animal Health (DAH), Ministry of Agriculture made four oral presentations and nine poster presentations at the 15th International Symposium of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics (ISVEE 15) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on 12-16 November 2018.

ISVEE 15 is a global forum for interdisciplinary collaboration and communication on veterinary epidemiology and economics among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, practitioners, and researchers, as well as health and veterinary public policymakers, to learn and share their vision of building a better life tomorrow for veterinary epidemiology at the local, regional, and international levels.

“This is a good opportunity to explain the work and achievements of the DAH / FAO Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT-2) project at an international event as well as to share experiences on addressing emerging infectious diseases (EID) with other stakeholders to get the best feedback”, said Luuk Schoonman, Chief Technical Advisor of FAO ECTAD Indonesia who participated in this event.

During the conference, FAO presented posters representing the four main EPT-2 project components, namely: Laboratory Diagnostics and Surveillance, Reduction in highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) Persistence and Spread in the Poultry Industry, Poultry Value Chain restructuring and the Field Epidemiology Training Programme for Veterinarians (FETPV) project.

On laboratory diagnostics and surveillance, three posters were presented on the isolation and characterization of H9N2 low pathogenic AI virus from chicken layer farms since 2016; H9N2 is causing severe economic hardship to poultry producers in the country. Posters were also presented on the detection of swine influenza virus infection in pigs in North Sumatra and on syndromic surveillance for the early detection of rabies in Bali in 2017.

Posters were also presented on DAH-FAO project activities to improve small-holder broiler farm productivity and profitability through improved biosecurity, flock vaccination and farm management; the use of egg yolk to detect antibodies in poultry flocks; and ehe benefits of government programmes to improve farm biosecurity and reduce antimicrobial use on poultry farms in Indonesia.

Two oral presentations were made on poultry value chain studies on improving marketing processes to reduce pathogen spillover and characterizing live bird markets (LBM) to reduce transmission of HPAI along the value chain in the Greater Jakarta area.

Three posters were displayed and one oral presentation made on recent advances in epidemiology capacity building, especially the recent establishment of the Indonesian Field Epidemiology Training Programme for Veterinarians (FETPV) project, the use of social network analysis to determine livestock movement patterns, and the development of a national integrated zoonoses and EID information system (SIZE 2.0).

Yunita Widayati, a Government Service Animal Health officer stated that ISVEE is a very valuable experience for her to speak at such an international event and present the results of the Indonesia government's work with FAO ECTAD. The 15^th ISVEE Congress, attended by representatives from 70 countries, reported 376 oral presentations and 428 poster presentations.