Since December 2017, more than 80 Global Swine Disease Monitoring Reports have been developed by a team at the University of Minnesota, now led by Dr. Maria Sol Perez Aguirreburualde. Funded by the Swine Health Information Center as part of its mission to identify emerging disease threats, the monthly reports are published in the SHIC newsletter and serve as a frequently accessed resource for the swine industry on the SHIC website. Reports are built with near real-time global surveillance of swine diseases for their content and rely on a network of global collaborators to expand and verify regional information. With renewal, the GSDMR will continue and expand in 2024 with a new online dashboard to display the global distribution of priority swine diseases in near real-time.
The GSDMR uses a continually updated procedure of screening to identify and score swine disease related events that may represent a risk for the US swine industry and reports those results on a monthly basis. Both official and unofficial information sources from primary or secondary platforms are collected, reviewed, then organized by disease and geographical region. A technical team subsequently synthesizes and frames each disease section, facilitating its interpretation by the audience reviewing the GSDMR.
After a multi-step review phase in which data and information is verified, edited, and/or expanded, in collaboration with key technical informants and a network of US and international stakeholders, a report describing the surveillance outcome is made available to SHIC. In extraordinary circumstances in which a rapid response is indicated, an immediate release of health event data is developed for rapid sharing with the pork industry (e.g., the first African swine fever outbreak in China, first ASF outbreak in Belgium, first classical swine fever outbreak in Japan in 25 years).
From November 2022 through April 2024, 17 GSDMRs were produced, highlighting the continuous expansion of ASF in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Currently, the three USDA-classified tier 1 reportable foreign animal diseases of swine (ASF, CSF, and foot-and-mouth disease) are included in the report. Additional swine diseases listed in the SHIC disease matrices, such as influenza and pseudorabies, are also included when appropriate after considering the epidemiological context of the event.
In 2023, a new section was incorporated into the GSDMR to provide specific regional disease information for swine industry stakeholders. In this feature, entitled “Focus on,” comprehensive snapshots of current knowledge of swine infectious diseases throughout regions were delivered quarterly. This section zoomed in on countries with emergent or consolidated pig production sectors. Feature goals were to build a temporal and spatial context regarding the dynamic changes of swine infectious diseases to support the understanding of point-in-time changes captured in the monthly report. Additionally, this new feature creates awareness of the risk dynamic to the US swine herd. A credible and consistent source of robust information is a crucial element for disease prioritization and for the development of risk-based preventive strategies to protect the swine industry.
The GSDMR is consistently one of the most accessed items in the monthly SHIC newsletter. In 2023, there were 7046 GSDMR page views on the SHIC website, making it one of the most visited on www.swinehealth.org.
The US swine industry is vulnerable to the introduction of emerging pathogens and routine swine disease monitoring provides early warnings of global disease challenges that could negatively impact US swine producers. GSDMR staff strive to continuously improve the model through developing private-public-academic partnerships to support near real time identification of hazards. This contributes to the mission of identifying disease risks and adds practical insight into the tools used by different stakeholders for disease prevention and control. Ultimately, the goals of the GSDMR are to continue contributing to identification of risks and raising awareness to support decision making process around current prevention and mitigation strategies for emerging disease introduction in the US.
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