Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)

SAFOSO has organized a workshop on COVID-19/ SARS-CoV-2 for Fenaco, a large Swiss agriculture cooperative. The crisis management team set up by the Fenaco’s management is constantly monitoring developments relating to the coronavirus. Measures have been implemented based on the one hand on the official regulations and recommendations and on the other hand on the specific conditions in the company. Various emergency concepts for the event of an epidemic or pandemic have been prepared.

SAFOSO works in partnership with the FAO regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (RAP) on developing a series of trainings to build capacities on detection and response to African swine fever in the South East Asia region. The second phase of African swine fever (ASF) capacity building activities started with a training on ASF Detection and Emergency Response organised on September 7-10 in the province of Battambang, Cambodia. National-level veterinarians eagerly joined the activity and trained around 25provincial and district level veterinarians.

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

The risk of transmission of antimicrobial resistance via raw poultry meat and the interaction with pets is underestimated by the general public, a new study co-authored by SAFOSO suggests.

Agriculture has traditionally been one of the most important sectors of the Ukrainian economy, given the high quality and availability of fertile land. But Ukraine’s agriculture potential has not been realized fully. An initiative to strengthen the dairy sector and the organic agriculture sector in Ukraine, is the Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine”. The Program started in August 2019 and will last until June 2023.

Most of the turnover (54%) veterinarians generate with the veal calf sector, comes from antimicrobial prescriptions a new studyco-authored by Isabel Lechner, Anaïs Léger and Katharina Stärk shows.

SAFOSO developed and conducted a regional training on African swine fever with veterinarians in South East Asia in partnership with the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and was supported by USAID.

The news is being flooded with perhaps unfamiliar epidemiological terms and concepts in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are not an epidemiologist, this can be really confusing and prevent you from truly understanding the key messages. But it is not only because of COVID-19 that we have an understanding of epidemiology, think of all the other animal and human diseases that are affecting us today. Building on our expertise in epidemiology, SAFOSO now offers an e-Learning course Epidemiology for Non-Epidemiologists.

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

Modelling of how diseases enter and spread in a region can play an important role to predict dynamics of transboundary diseases. Outputs from modelling can contribute to better preparedness of authorities and rapid response to exotic diseases.

How can metagenomics be used to survey antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally and what are its challenges? A SAFOSO team has contributed to building a blended learning course (e-learning and a hands-on workshop) on the use of metagenomics to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In their recent publication in Frontiers in Public Health, co-authored by SAFOSO, provides an overview over the course structure, its contents and as well as participants’ insights. The course is now freely available as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

The world has been dealing with a number of epidemics lately. It has only been a few months ago that we have seen the images of pigs being slaughtered in China due to African swine fever. Avian influenza has also recently resurged in China. These epidemics are still ongoing, but are largely overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.