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Further measures to ease the equine influenza burden
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The National Management Group (NMG) overseeing the response to equine influenza has reaffirmed that the focus of the response continues to be control of the disease with a view to eradication. It also reaffirmed the importance it attaches to minimising the social and economic impact of the disease on horse owners through a number of new measures.
Mindful of the high costs of the equine influenza response on horse owners, NMG has moved to ease the burden by broadening the use of vaccination to more aggressively contain and eradicate the disease and free up movement controls in certain zones.
Further strategic vaccination of horses will be undertaken with up to 240,000 horses expected to be vaccinated by early 2008. An allocation and distribution schedule is being developed based on business cases and ongoing provision and refinement of data from industry.
Guidelines have been released for this purpose and national horse sectors have been invited to lodge business cases for vaccine allocations.
Proposals will need to be consistent with nationally agreed objectives for vaccination and include targeted surveillance, identification, tracing, auditing and on-going biosecurity arrangements.
Business cases will need to include evidence about:
o The vaccine’s proposed use within an identifiable sector of horses
o Details there is an accountable organisation responsible for all aspects of vaccine holding and use that can audit, identify and track all vaccinated horses
o The accountable organisation’s rules, authority and capability to control the activity of horses and people, the application of penalties and sanctions, and the system to trace horses and people moving to and from events or training locations, and
o The biosecurity measures to be applied on the movement of horses and people within each location to prevent the potential exposure of other horses to the virus.
NMG stressed it was keeping a constant check on both the direct and indirect costs of containment and eradication efforts and identified that future priorities to assist the industry included: While the priority for vaccination remains existing buffer zones around high concentrations of the disease in NSW and Queensland, NMG also moved to create a small national contingency supply of vaccine to support buffers that might be required for disease control purposes should the need arise in the future.
