Preliminary announcement and call for invited contributions.

Surveillance of health events in wildlife is of increasing significance in Europe. To face the challenge, the European Union, member countries and other institutions across the continent, have subsidised several projects focusing on improving sampling, diagnostic testing, data recording and data management, risk assessment and mitigation of disease outbreak crises.

The purpose of the workshop is to bring together experts from several EU FP7 research programs (including ANTIGONE, APHAEA, EDEN next and WildTech) and recognised scientists, to share the most recent concepts in knowledge of this difficult art of collecting data which is essential in gathering information for the management of wildlife related diseases. In addition of the veterinary or human health concern, this discipline is an important constituent for the conservation of biodiversity on the large scale.

The workshop will offer opportunities to present invited short lectures, emphasising new technologies and approaches for surveillance in the field, the lab, in front of a computer, and in the office of decision makers. A large part of the workshop will be dedicated to round-table discussions addressing the challenges of:

1. selecting targets for sampling,
2. improving the relevance and quality of tests,
3. collecting appropriate data on the European continental scale,
4. preparedness for ‘emergences’,
5. assessing the progress of control operations,
6. recognition of skills in the wildlife health discipline,
7. Communication of information to stakeholders.

There will be an associated poster display.

Participation in the workshop will be charged by the organisers of the EWDA conference, for all participants. Number of participants will be limited to 50. The organising committee cannot financially support the invited lectures but all registrations paid by the EU programs or other authorities will be presented in the program and website as sponsors of the workshop. Abstracts of the presentations and posters will be made available on line. It is anticipated that each working group will provide a list of recommendations which will be sent to the appropriate directorates of the EU (such as DG SANCO, EFSA and ECDC) and to international organisations such as the OIE, WHO and FAO.

The format and nature of the expected recommendations has to be decided by a representative of each participating EU program or organisation. For that purpose, a scientific committee of the workshop will be created to advise the organising committee on the list of invited lectures, and chair of the 7 round-tables and lecture presentations.

Should your EU program be interested to participate, please send the pre-registration form to marc.artois@vetagro-sup.fr.

Organising committee: Marc Artois & Paul Duff (EWDA)

Pre-registration form:

First and family names:

E-mail contact:

Skype:

International phone number:

Representative of (name of the program or organisation):

will represent such a program in the scientific committee and attend the workshop.