The impact of current and proposed changes to general guidelines on bluetongue surveillance of the Office International des Epizooties.
New draft guidelines for surveillance have been prepared for possible submission to the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) General Session for adoption in 2005. These guidelines are non-prescriptive and output-oriented, but also identify a series of critical elements required to effectively implement and evaluate surveillance systems. The guidelines allow for the use of a range of approaches to surveillance, including the use of non-random data sources and the combination of multiple sources of evidence. They also require transparency and the presence of basic quality assurance systems. The guidelines deal with surveillance to demonstrate freedom from infection as well as surveillance to determine the distribution and occurrence of infection. If the draft guidelines are adopted, a range of novel approaches to surveillance of bluetongue virus (BTV) may become formally acknowledged and accepted under the OIE Terrestrial animal health code. This may enable different countries to tailor their BTV surveillance systems more closely to their own needs and capabilities while maintaining equivalence in the outputs of the systems.
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AusVet Animal Health Services, 140 Falls Road, Wentworth Falls, NSW 2782, Australia.