Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)

Who are the people behind SAFOSO? What inspires them and how do they contribute to solving animal health challenges? Susanne Küker shares her story.

The excessive consumption of antimicrobials has become a major concern at the global level, and several studies have highlighted the link between antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance. Strategies such as the Swiss National Strategy “StAR” have been implemented to reduce the disposal of antimicrobials in farm animals. In Switzerland however, veterinarians make economic profit by disposing antimicrobials to farmers. A reduction of sales will therefore inevitably lead to a reduction in revenues for the veterinarian.

From February to April, SAFOSO supported the canton of Aargau with its pilot project Repetitive Testing (ReTe) for SARS-CoV-2 in collaboration with IXORIS and other stakeholders.

Throughout the pandemic, African swine fever (ASF), a viral disease of pigs and wild boar has continued affecting countries and causing serious socio-economic consequences to the swine value chain especially farmers worldwide.

Who are the people behind SAFOSO? What inspires them and how do they contribute to solving animal health challenges? Marco De Nardi shares his story.

Silja is very happy to join the team at SAFOSO for 6 months as an intern and to have the opportunity to gain more experience in the field of One Health. Currently, she is mostly supporting projects on COVID-19 as well as a few other projects on animal health.

SAFOSO and the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in partnership with USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) completed a 10-month project in December 2020 on African Swine Fever (ASF) capacity building for veterinarians in South East Asia. The project supported development of training material on ASF early detection and emergency response specific to the regional and country-level context.

SAFOSO worked with a Swiss insurance company to develop and implement a webinar series to help their employees to breakdown the evolving information on the COVID-19 pandemic and what it means for them in the workplace.

Currently, news of ongoing outbreaks of Avian Influenza (AI) in birds are hitting the media. Since November, 436 outbreaks in domestic birds and 1101 in wild birds have been reported across Europe, with serious economic consequences for poultry keepers. But what does that mean? Here is our summary of the past and present AI situation.

Who are the people behind SAFOSO? What inspires them and how do they contribute to solving animal health challenges? Carla Stoffel shares her story.

SAFOSO organized a webinar on AMR for the insurance company CSS Health Insurance. The webinar helped attendees understand how antimicrobials, and the resistance they can induce in bacteria, impacts both their work and their daily lives. An important goal of the webinar is that participants are enabled to form their own opinion on this important health-threatening topic.

How can trade be maintained when a country or region is facing transboundary diseases, such as African swine fever (ASF)? In the recent workshop at the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH) online annual conference, SAFOSO provided an overview on compartmentalization as an emerging business strategy in integrated food systems and emphasized the role of private industry and veterinary authorities in its implementation. The implementation of compartments is an initiative mainly driven by the industry that requires a close private-public partnership with the veterinary authorities.