WiREDZ final meeting Generates Leads for Future Connections

Participants in the WiREDZ Meeting

In addition to roundtable discussions and workshops, delegates gave presentations outlining the wildlife surveillance in their countries and highlighting the wildlife zoonoses they considered to be the most important. Delegates were also asked to list the institutions involved in wildlife disease work and how these were funded.

Joint chair and leader of the WiREDZ project, Paul Duff, said the meeting was not only enjoyable but immensely instructive and generated positive leads for the SIG’s next steps.

“Med-Vet-Net allowed us a unique opportunity to contact scientists unknown to the SIG organizers who we were then able to invite to the Budapest meeting. The delegates were so enthusiastic about their work which usually involved dealing with the wildlife reservoirs of important zoonoses, such as rabies, brucella and trichinella,” Paul said. “We learnt so much about what actually happens in these countries and we hope that some of the ideas about holistic wildlife disease surveillance — that is, surveillance centring on free-living wildlife — will be passed back and developed across Europe.”

Paul said the long-term objective was clear: every country in Europe should have a national wildlife disease surveillance scheme. “In simple terms a scheme to look for unusual disease in any free-living vertebrate species.”

Delegates also made good progress with discussions on European wildlife disease networks and on how wildlife disease surveillance networks could be established to cover all European countries.

“Hopefully this will be a basis for other initiatives post Med-Vet-Net, like the European Wildlife Disease Association, to take this forward and develop networks,” Paul said. “It is another big aim to provide a pan-European network for reporting wildlife disease, as it occurs.”

The WILDLIST, the inclusive on-line register of all scientists and research groups working on wildlife-related emerging diseases that was created by WiREDZ, is a fundamental start to that network.

“It is important that we secure financial support to maintain and develop the WILDLIST, and we have entered preliminary discussions with the FP7 WildTech consortium to endorse and provide support for additional funding,” Paul said.

Lisa Yon, who presented an overview of the Consortium’s work at the December meeting, said the WILDLIST register was a tremendous resource that WildTech would like to support.

Delegates at the final meeting agreed however that while the WILDLIST was a very useful tool for veterinary diagnosticians, biologists, ecological scientists and others, there was room for improvement — more information about meetings and conferences could be disseminated, and functionality to search the list by country or institution could be added.

It was also thought the WILDLIST could be used as a means to collect data and generate annual reports for the World Animal Health Organization to augment information provided by Chief Veterinary Officers across the EU.
Such improvements though will depend on the support that can be found for the WILDLIST.

However the WILDLIST evolves, its design and use is so simple it should confirm its place as an indispensable tool, not just for those working with wildlife, but also European policy-makers and authorities charged with protecting public health.

To read more about WiREDZ or to register with the WILDLIST, visit: www.medvetnet.org/wiredz and www.medvetnet.org/wildlist