Focal Points Workshop and Aquatic Animal Health Framework Meeting

The Regional Workshop for WOAH Focal Points for Aquatic Animals

The Regional Workshop for WOAH Focal Points for Aquatic Animals was organised in Busan, Korea from 26 to 28 July 2023 in collaboration with the National Institute of Fisheries Science, Republic of Korea which is a WOAH Reference Laboratory for Viral Haemorrhagic Septicaemia. The workshop covered a wide range of topics, including 1) updates on WOAH Aquatic Code and Manual and aquatic animal disease reporting; 2) capacity building on aquatic biosecurity, laboratory capacity and networking, AMR in aquaculture, preparedness and response for emerging diseases and WOAH PVS pathway-aquatic; and 3) implementation of aquatic animal health strategy in the Asia Pacific Region. Participants actively participated in group works to identify barriers to implement the national aquatic animal health programmes after the guiding presentations on specific topics and discussed on possible solutions and list of actions to overcome those barriers.

Highlights from Focal Point Workshop

The focal points actively participated in the group work and highlighted the following areas:

• the importance of developing new chapters on Ornamental Aquatic Animals and revision of the chapter “Compartmentalisation”;
• to have inter-organisational collaboration at the national level to provide focal points direct access to WOAH for better disease reporting on aquatic animal diseases while continuing submission of QAAD reports;
• to prioritise capacity building on biosecurity, disease epidemiology and enhance reporting as the priority actions for implementation of national aquatic animal health plans.

The 4th Meeting of the ad hoc Steering Committee (SC) on Regional Collaboration Framework on Aquatic Animal Health in Asia and the Pacific

The 4th Meeting of the ad hoc Steering Committee (SC) on Regional Collaboration Framework on Aquatic Animal Health in Asia and the Pacific was held back-to-back on 29 June 2023. SC members agreed to develop project “Regional collaboration and utilisation of WOAH scientific networks support more effective responses to emerging diseases of aquatic animals” for which Dr Ingo Ernst presented the project outline template. The meeting also supported to complete the project by conducting a scenario-based emergency response exercise to explore collaborative actions to improve the response to an emerging disease outbreak of regional significance.

Highlights from the 4^th meeting of the ad hoc Steering Committee Meeting on Regional Collaboration Framework on Aquatic Animal Health

The members of the ad hoc steering committee prioritised the actions to be implemented under the regional framework:

• response exercise to examine regional coordination;
• biosecurity;
• enhance reporting/improve regional reporting performance
• disease epidemiology
• disease-oriented preparedness gaps
• inter-laboratory comparability
• Environmental DNA (E-DNA)
• aquatic animal welfare.

For more information, the event’s agenda and resulting recommendations are available below.

Details

Dates: 26-29 June 2023

Location: Busan, Korea

Participation: By invitation

Documents

Agenda and Presentations

• Focal Point Workshop for Aquatic Animals
• 4th SC Meeting on Aquatic Animal Health

Recommendations (coming soon)