The Director of Animal Health Canada's Emergency Management Division says the main focus of the division right now is planning and preparedness for foreign animal disease.Animal Health Canada's Forum 2024 is set for October 8th and 9th in Ottawa.Among the highlights will be an update on the activities of the organization's Emergency Management Division.Emergency Management Division Director Erica Charlton says, at this stage, the main focus is disease planning and preparedness.
Quote-Erica Charlton-Animal Health Canada:
The big ones that we're looking at is planning and preparedness for African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease and High Path Avian Influenza in poultry and it's also popped up in dairy in the U.S. and we're paying attention to that.As those disease planning and preparedness things take shape and they've been trialed and they can sit there at the ready and evergreen, we might end up broadening our focus on emergency planning as far as natural disasters, climate change, fire, things like that.
There's been five years of work done already on African Swine Fever planning and preparedness.It's been all hands-on deck on African Swine Fever planning and preparedness.We've learned a lot over the five years of that.We have a really good template on collaboration and the right people at the table, relationship building, and so we're going to take that forward and start a focus on Foot and Mouth Disease planning and preparedness.
So, what we're going to end up with is a broader foreign animal disease planning preparedness template so you can plug and play any disease and the hope is to use it in any sort of disease response.
Charleton says although the current focus is disease management, later on it will also be other emergencies.For more information or to register for Animal Health Canada's Forum 2024 visit animalhealthcanada.ca.
Source : Farmscape.ca