An international conference Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

An international conference, Scientific Developments and Technical Challenges in the Progressive Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) in South Asia, will be held 13-15 February 2012 in New Delhi, India. It is jointly organized by FAO and the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) of the Ministry of Agriculture, India, under the broad umbrella of the FAO/OIE Global Framework for the Progressive Control of Transboundary Diseases (GF-TADs).This conference is organised jointly by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) will be attended by 600 participants from 22 countries.

It will aim to review the rate of progress in the field of FMD vaccines and vaccination programmes, diagnostics, and the science of progressive control (risk management decision making and programme optimization), and to identify priorities for investment in science that would have greatest impact for regional and perhaps global control efforts, which would be presented at the FAO/OIE Global Conference on FMD Control in mid-2012.

The key issues to be brought forward include the fact that current lines of basic FMD research have great potential for the development of improved vaccines with properties that could reduce cost and achieve greater impact of vaccination programmes, that thorough understanding of current vaccines and FMD epidemiology is essential to design more effective control measures, and the growing FMD scientific output from Eurasia has potential to create new options and greater levels of control if public policy makes good use of the best science.