Partnerships are essential for effective surveillance systems. All livestock value chain participants including producers, transporters, rural service suppliers, abattoirs, veterinarians and diagnosticians have a role to play in disease recognition, reporting and response.
The Farmer-led surveillance systems project will seek the participation of Australian producers in a pilot program demonstrating the value of farmer-led partnerships for improving livestock surveillance at the farm level, for endemic and emergency animal diseases.
The rural community plays a vital role in livestock surveillance and goat, pig, cattle and sheep producers across the country are invited to take part in this project.
Project team:
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Dr Yiheyis Taddele Maru |
Dr Marta Hernandez-Jover |
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Dr Yiheyis Maru is a senior systems research scientist, who has worked for CSIRO since 2002. He is a veterinarian who led and organised surveillance and vaccination programs for Rinderpest, a disease of cattle which was eradicated from the world in 2011. Yiheyis has an interest in understanding social, economic and environmental factors for improving livelihoods of rural communities. He has done research on the importance of social networks on the resilience of pastoralists in central Australia, and on the role of social factors on the transmission of African swine fever in east Africa. He leads the subproject on improving surveillance through farmer-led partnership as part of this RnD4Profit project. |
Dr Marta Hernandez-Jover is a Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health at the School of Animal and Veterinary Science at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. Her main interests and current research focus on biosecurity, disease surveillance and risk analysis methods applied to infectious animal diseases and public health. Marta graduated as a veterinarian in 2000 from the Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona in Spain, where she also completed her PhD on livestock traceability. In 2006, Marta joined the University of Sydney as research fellow working on traceability, biosecurity, disease surveillance and risk analysis. Marta started at the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences at CSU in 2012, where she teaches epidemiology, public health and food safety to veterinary students. |