Victory over foot-and-mouth in sight, says NZ expert

By CARROLL DU CHATEAU

A New Zealand disease expert who has been working with British authorities combating the foot-and-mouth epidemic sees victory in sight.

Massey University epidemiologist Dr Roger Morris believes the disease will peak at about 1500 to 2000 farms, with eradication sometime between mid-year to October.

"Basically it depends whether we have any more bad luck events."

Dr Morris, who puts the initial outbreak into the "worst luck" category, says the disease was diagnosed late and was from a pig farm - which made it ferociously contagious.

Infected sheep were moving around and not enough resources were allocated to stopping the disease.

Original predictions, using less aggressive eradication tactics, suggested that between 4000 and 4500 farms would be affected.

"Our evaluation showed that vaccination would only have reduced the outbreak's size by 10 per cent, maybe 20 per cent - almost up to the worst case scenario."

British authorities are now using the 24/48-hour plan which, according to Dr Morris' epidemic-indicating software program EpiMAN, will produce a huge drop in numbers.

The 24/48 plan works on the basis of eradicating animals on infected farms within 24 hours, and killing all those within a 1.5km "immunity ring radius" within two days.



He also believes that the public arguments and threats of lawsuits from "armchair experts" trying to change the slaughter strategy to a vaccination programme distracted authorities and slowed eradication efforts down.

British analysis now shows that the outbreak started at a pig farm in the small village of Haddon on the Wall in Cumbria.

It went on to infect sheep in the surrounding area, many of which were on their way to market.

The virus spread like a bushfire.

"That meant thousands of traces had to be done," says Dr Morris. "And because EpiMAN [which Britain's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food bought from Dr Massey in 1998] had not been set up to work at local level, the disease had to be followed manually - which wasn't possible."

Herald Online feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

World organisation for animal health

UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

The European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

Pig Health/Foot and Mouth feature

Virus databases online