JEDDAH, 9 July 2003 — A recent newswire on the new efforts to eradicate foot and mouth disease in the Kingdom is welcome. Whether real or perceived, psychological or economical, FMD, as one of the most infectious animal diseases around, has and continues to have a great impact on our way of life.
Increased government efforts to eradicate it in the country are a great relief not just to interested stakeholders but to the public. We need to understand, or be made to understand, the potential benefits for all. Efforts must also be made to map out the possible pitfalls on the road to achieving the desired goals. Failure to do this may adversely influence positive outcomes and lead to future governmental unwillingness to venture into such “eradication” efforts as well as a loss of valued and vital communal collaboration.
There are many potential positive outcomes. For one, an intensified effort to bring eradicate FMD would imply putting in place a good deal of scientific and material resources. This should translate to more employment opportunities for well-trained Saudis. Veterinarians, veterinary nurses and technicians as well as various cadres of supporting laboratory staff are amongst the many careers that would benefit from the effort.
An added benefit would be the simultaneous upgrading of the status and quality of the veterinary profession in the Kingdom and the Gulf. Worldwide, veterinarians play the leading role in the effort to control infectious animal diseases like FMD as well other lethal diseases that pass from animals to man. These are known as zoonoses, and Rift Valley fever is a classical local example. Empowering local Saudi veterinarians with modern updated training in diagnostics, epidemiology and animal extension services would have multiple benefits.
Other forms of positive developments should materialize in the establishment of forums (such as veterinary associations, regular local and regional conferences, local veterinary journals and electronic list serves) where veterinary professionals and other scientists may share experience and data and collaborate. Most of these are lacking or grossly ineffective at the moment.
There is also the vital role that technologically updated and resource-enhanced veterinarians play in public health defense against zoonotic diseases and other emerging infectious diseases. These roles are aptly demonstrated by their contributions to the efforts in monitoring West Nile fever in the US as well as specie jumping avian influenza in Europe and Hong Kong. They are also playing leading roles in the unraveling of the mysteries still surrounding the causative virus of the SARS epidemic.
There are image-enhancing benefits abroad too. Presently a country such as the UK does not allow animal-origin food material from Saudi Arabia to be brought in by visiting Saudis, even in small amounts. Local FMD incidence is one major reason for this policy. That might change if the disease is brought under control.
There is also a greater need to effectively and continuously communicate these benefits to the various stakeholders. A multidisciplinary approach is needed. Fire-brigade methods, often devoid of scientific analyses, planning and execution are highly counterproductive at any stage of an all-out onslaught on highly infectious diseases like FMD. Locally generated informative materials — multilingual, easily available with electronic dissemination — are needed to fully absorb the public into the anti FMD war.
Pragmatically, we must look at the expected difficulties that may plague the road to success. Unfavorable activities by those in the animal industry consist of the smuggling of livestock into the country; illegal movements of restricted livestock; illegal slaughtering in uncertified abattoirs; collusion with unprofessional and dishonest meat inspection staff and others allied to the industry.
Challenges at the governmental level could include the lack of well defined inter governmental agency collaborative roles; the unproductive overlapping of roles of government agencies; and the lack of timely data sharing between government agencies. Community-based complexities could include the unwillingness of the general population to be co-opted into such a massive community-dependent program. Personal short-term benefits and the lack of a well-defined government assured compensatory mechanism could also provoke avoidable hindrances.
Both the lay public and the scientific community should be primed to understand what is meant by eradication or control. Control, as used by disease prevention specialists, means the reduction of disease incidence to a locally acceptable level as a result of deliberated interventions. Eradication, technically speaking, is applied to the permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of an infection caused by a specific agent as a result of deliberate effort. Regional eradication — also known as elimination — implies the reduction to zero of the incidence of infection caused by a specific agent in a defined geographic area (such as the Arabian Peninsula) as a result of deliberate intervention efforts.
Building upon these definitions and the aforementioned benefits and problems, the concerned stakeholders, especially the government, can plot strategies and determine pre-program requirements and response options. Some of the data required before any full intervention can be meaningfully achieved include the determination of the burden of infection and carrier status in potentially affected local animal populations.
A synthesis of the preceding discussion should cause us to ask some pertinent questions — can we, given the present situation, achieve eradication in the country? Or in the Peninsula? Do we have enough data and structural capability to embark on such a mission? As the saying goes: “Make your bargain before beginning to plow.”
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