A Global PPR Network for Field Staff.

Abstract

Among the lessons learned from rinderpest eradication was that networks developed for laboratory testing for diagnosis and for serological assays for rinderpest virus antibody proved very valuable to the final success of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme. The Joint Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) co-ordinated perhaps the best known of these networks across Africa. This network successfully built and supported a team of skilled laboratory staff across the continent who knew, trusted and collaborated with one another, and from which many individuals progressed to important positions in national, regional, and global animal disease control. The value of such networks for PPR control and eradication, as well as collaboration between laboratories in general, encouraged two meetings of the Global PPR Research Alliance (GPRA) after which the FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) established a Global Research and Expertise Network (GREN) as an integral part of the PPR-Global Eradication Programme. The background and potential of GREN was explored and developed during an electronic conference held in February to April 2014 and GREN was launched at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna in April 2018. The author contributed to the first meeting of the GPRA, and subsequently, as moderator of the e-conference in 2014, had first-hand access to individual inputs and ideas and drafted the final report. He presented a summary of these and additional findings at the launch of GREN in 2018. This paper re-caps some of the findings and concepts in those presentations and reports. It then makes the case that whilst GREN should actively encourage and develop technical networking at the laboratory level it should not miss the opportunity to establish an equivalent programme for staff involved in field operations.