The University of Sydney-led Asia Pacific Consortium of Veterinary Epidemiology (APCOVE) recently launched its world-class field training package on the sidelines of the World Health Summit in Berlin. The package is designed to help veterinary practitioners and animal handlers detect and prevent infectious diseases in the field before they emerge as pandemics.
The launch took place during the Global Field Epidemiology Partnership (GFEP) meeting as part of events around the World Health Summit.
“This is the biggest resource for field veterinary epidemiology training globally. And it is now available free of cost for anyone,” said APCOVE leader A/Prof Navneet Dhand from the Sydney School of Veterinary Science.
“It provides a valuable resource for veterinary services around the globe to strengthen the capacity of their workforces to detect, prevent and contain infectious disease threats.
“The risk of zoonotic diseases transferring from livestock and wildlife to humans is increasing, as shown by the COVID-19 pandemic,” A/Prof Dhand added.
“So, training new generations of animal disease detectives at the frontline is vital to help prevent diseases wiping out livestock or infecting humans.”
The package comprises 36 eLearning modules on outbreak investigation, surveillance, data analysis, risk assessment, disease control, biosecurity, One Health, leadership and communication. The modules have been prepared by the collective efforts of more than 40 APCOVE partners from all veterinary schools in Australia and New Zealand, one veterinary school from the US and eight countries in the Asia Pacific over the past three years.
The training units have been developed and tested in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. The modules have also been translated and are available in Lao, Khmer, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese and Burmese.
The modules have been released under the Creative Commons license and are available free of cost for anyone from this website.
