PRIORITISATION OF VACCINES – APPROACHES TO MAXIMISING IMPACT

The often-accepted approach to FMD vaccination campaigns is that it is important to vaccinate as many animals as possible against as many strains as may occur in the country. However, this approach is subject to resource limitations. For instance, with constrained budget then cheaper, low quality vaccines may be purchased, or with the limited veterinary manpower then unskilled operatives may be used.
Modelling shows that high quality vaccines will eliminate disease quicker than low quality vaccines and is cost effective. Prioritization is therefore imperative, but first we need to understand what prioritization means as this can take different forms. Once we have defined prioritization then two elements become key, one is the understand of where the disease is occurring, ie surveillance, and the other is predicting need, ie forecasting.
Finally we can consider examples of prioritization such as the focus on areas where the greatest spread may occur or targeting the strain most likely to be of current risk.
The goal of all players is to control FMD as quickly as possible to reduce the impact of the disease and to remove the risk to disease free areas. Prioritization of vaccine usage is an important component in achieving that goal. During this talk we highlight these points and open the discussion on how best to implement these approaches.

Alasdair King
Merck Animal Health, USA