Abstract
The transmission of pathogens across the interface between wildlife and livestock presents a challenge to the development of effective surveillance and control measures. Wild birds, especially waterbirds such as the Anseriformes and Charadriiformes are considered to be the natural hosts of Avian Influenza (AI), and are presumed to pose one of the most likely vectors for incursion of AI into European poultry flocks. We have developed a generic quantitative risk map, derived from the classical epidemiological risk equation, to describe the relative, spatial risk of disease incursion into poultry flocks via wild birds. We then assessed the risk for AI incursion into British flocks. The risk map suggests that the majority of AI incursion risk is highly clustered within certain areas of Britain, including in the east, the south west and the coastal north-west of England. The clustering of high risk areas concentrates total risk in a relatively small land area; the top 33% of cells contribute over 80% of total incursion risk. This suggests that targeted risk-based sampling in a relatively small geographical area could be a much more effective and cost-efficient approach than representative sampling. The generic nature of the risk map method, allows rapid updating and application to other diseases transmissible between wild birds and poultry.
Highlights
Avian Influenza (AI) viruses are of great concern as livestock pathogens in terms of both animal welfare and economic impacts, and as potential zoonoses and progenitors of future pandemic disease
In April 2006, H5N1 Highly Pathogenic AI (HPAI) was isolated from a Whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) that had been found dead on the east coast of Scotland, marking the first detection of the so-called Eurasian lineage H5N1 HPAI virus in Great Britain (GB)[7]
The specific risk question was: How does the spatial risk of HPAI and Low Pathogenicity AI (LPAI) incursion in poultry via wild birds vary across Great Britain (GB)? It was not possible to estimate absolute risk due to a lack of knowledge regarding the amount of contact between wild birds and poultry; we measured relative spatial risk on a 10 × 10 km Ordnance Survey (OS) grid[10]
Summary
Avian Influenza (AI) viruses are of great concern as livestock pathogens in terms of both animal welfare and economic impacts, and as potential zoonoses and progenitors of future pandemic disease. The subtypes of most concern for incursion into poultry flocks are H5 and H7, where Highly Pathogenic AI (HPAI) pathotypes can mutate from Low Pathogenicity AI (LPAI) viruses, leading to systemic infection of susceptible species of poultry and subsequently severe morbidity and mortality[1] Both HPAI and LPAI subtypes of H5 and H7 are notifiable diseases to the World Organisation for Animal Health (Office International des Epizooties, OIE) and European Commission (EC), and once detected are subject to control measures by both national and international bodies[2,3]. In April 2006, H5N1 HPAI was isolated from a Whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) that had been found dead on the east coast of Scotland, marking the first detection of the so-called Eurasian lineage H5N1 HPAI virus in Great Britain (GB)[7] This led to the development of a risk map to assess the risk of H5N1 HPAI introduction to British poultry flocks[8]. We have parameterised the risk map for the risk of AI introduction into the UK poultry flock through wild birds
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