Lumpy skin disease preparedness

Under the umbrella of the Global Framework for the Progressive Control of Transboundary Animal Diseases (GF-TADs) and jointly with the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (EuFMD) and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute in Germany, FAO is offering an online course on lumpy skin disease preparedness in Russian language. Russian-speaking veterinarians can apply.

Background

Lumpy skin disease is a vector-borne disease in cattle that has been spreading gradually over the past years from Africa, through the Middle East and Turkey, and into the Balkans, Russia and the Caucasus. More recently, the disease has made a big jump into Asia, to countries with the highest cattle numbers worldwide, such as Bangladesh, China, and India. Never in history has lumpy skin disease had such a wide geographic distribution. Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries are therefore under an immediate threat of a lumpy skin disease incursion, which could be devastating for their economies, livelihoods and trade. To ensure preparedness, early detection, and response against the incursion of any transboundary animal disease, it is paramount to train the first responders – the veterinarians, and as many as possible.

The course

The 10-hour tutored course has six training modules that cover a range of topics, such as the overview of the disease, clinical and pathological diagnosis, sampling and laboratory diagnosis, epidemiology and outbreak investigation, surveillance, and control and eradication. The course starts with an introductory webinar on the training and the trainers through short technical presentation. Trainers are experts in either diagnostics, epidemiology, or the control of disease. Each participant can access the training material, discussion forum, recordings of the webinars, and a list of further resources.

Each week during the four-week period, a specific topic will be in focus for the participants and trainers to interact on in the discussion forum. Interactions are further facilitated by the trainers’ questions.

The course ends with a final course assessment and a closing webinar covering topics that proved to be difficult or have sparked the most discussion in the forum. Finally, through the feedback section, participants can rate the course content and provide suggestions for further improvement.