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Animal disease simulation approaches have been used to great benefit for many years in veterinary medicine and now they become a useful tool in policy decision making on animal disease preparedness and disease response. Animal disease simulation models are especially relevant in agricultural and veterinary public health systems fraught with uncertainties, to help program and policy decision makers to develop more objective and scientific decisions. In general, these models allow decision makers to represent disease spread in the population under a set of epidemiological parameters and to evaluate the effect of different disease surveillance and control strategies. The North America Animal Disease Spread Model (NAADSM) is an interesting tool for policy makers and veterinary officials that can be integrated, for instance, into risk assessment models to evaluate more objectively the consequences of the introduction of foreign animal diseases in a region.
This course addresses concepts of infectious disease transmission and disease control using the North America Animal Disease Spread Model (NAADSM) within a selected disease epidemiological situation in China. Concepts of probability distributions, stochastic processes, contact rate and basic reproductive number estimation were discussed in the context of NAADSM.
During the course the participants would be able to
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Understand disease spread concepts and be able to develop the parameters to run a disease outbreak simulation in NAADSM.
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Develop deterministic and stochastic disease spread models in Excel
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Develop disease transmission parameters from outbreak and animal movement data
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Develop parameters and run the simulations in NAADSM
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Evaluate NAADSM outputs, recognizing data limitations and model assumptions
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Communicate the results obtained from the simulations
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Integrate NAADSM as part of the risk assessment process
Dr. Javier Sanchez, DVM PhD, Epidemiologist, Animal Health Risk Assessment Unit, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Atlantic Veterinary College
Dr. Emery Leger, Risk Assessment Trainer, Risk Analyst and Scientific Advisor in Animal Health Risk Assessment unit of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Dr. Javier Burchard, Project Manager, BPO
Mr. Li Baogen, Assistant Manager, BPO
Dr. Cai Lijuan, Division Director, CAHEC.
Mr. Sun Peiyuan, Technical Advisor and Training Coordinator, BPO
Dr. Javier Sanchez and Dr. Emery Leger Introduced outbreak simulation using the North America Animal Disease Spread Model (NAADSM) throughout formal presentations, practical exercises imbibed in participatory method. Firstly they made familiar the trainees to NAADSM software interface and the type of parameters required to develop a simulation scenario. A sample scenario (set of parameters to represent a particular outbreak situation) was practiced with NAADSM. Second step they demonstrated the trainees how to : Import a population files into NAADSM using Excel, create production types in NAADSM, enter the disease state periods using probability distributions in NAADSM, etc. The third step Dr. Javier Sanchez and Dr. Emery Leger analyzed a fictitious dataset representing 3960 farm locations for the province of Shandong in China.
Step by step all trainees learned how to use NAADSM for animal disease outbreak simulation. Trainees understood the basic principles, mechanism of NAADSM about how to Import a population file, create production types, enter the disease state periods. Trainees also learned how to:
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Identify and develop production type combinations in NAADSM
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Develop and enter into NAADSM disease spread parameters
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Enter parameters for surveillance and control measures in NAADSM
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Develop model scenarios
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Interpret model scenario outputs
Thirty four participants from China Animal Disease Control Centre (CADCC), China Animal Health and Epidemiology Centre (CAHEC) and the Animal Husbandry Bureaus Veterinary (HAB) from the project provinces attended the training.
The workshop was held with good interaction between trainers and participants. During the workshop trainees asked many questions. Trainers answered them with examples, drawings, pictures, body language and role playing. Trainer’s sense of humor, patience and knowledge gave trainees a very good impression. Trainee’s hard work, technical background and good English language skills impressed the trainers. The activity evaluation show that scores for Strongly Agree, Much agree/Good , Agree/Good Disagree/Poor, Much disagree/Poor, Strongly Disagree/Poor are 80.21%、17.71%、2.08%、0.00%、0.00% respectively. It is no doubt that the training achieves great success. But we realize that there are some obstacles needed to be overcome for the further utilization of NAADSM through training effectiveness evaluation. One of them is that the NAADSM has only an English version. There is an urgent need for Chinese version. The other problem is incompatible to Chinese version of Windows operating system in computer. In order to attract more Chinese users and improve China animal husbandry and veterinary services, our project will employ some computer expertise to modify NAADSM and will arrange more further training in project provinces.
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Dr. Javier Burchard is giving openning speech |
Dr. Leger is lecturing |
Dr. Sanchuzes is answering question |
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Trainee's interaction |
Mr. Li Baogen is giving
closing speech |
NAADSM workshop |
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