News

In the period from September 24 till September 25, 2018, the 11th meeting of the Standing Group of Experts on African swine fever (ASF) was held in Warsaw, Poland, on the platform of the Global Framework for Progressive Control of Transboundary Animal Diseases (GF-TADs) Regional Committee under the umbrella of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) with the participation of the members of the European Commission (EC), the OIE Regional Representation in Moscow, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The regular meeting was dedicated to the discussion of the issues on “ASF epidemiology in wild boar population and in the environment”. The participants of the meeting discussed the current epidemic situation in the ASF infected Eurasian countries (Moldova, the Russian Federation, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Belarus and Belgium), as well as the outcome of the infection prevention and eradication measures in place.

Advisor to the Head of the Rosselkhoznadzor Nikita Lebedev and Head of the Reference Laboratory for ASF of the Rosselkhoznadzor subordinate FGBI “ARRIAH” Alexey Igolkin attended the meeting from the Russian side. In his speech, Alexey Igolkin identified the trend for ASF cluster distribution in the Russian Federation in 2017-2018 and also talked on the epidemic dynamics in the Kaliningrad Oblast and the boundary regions of Poland in 2017-2018. ASF epidemic spread findings are indicative of intentional underreporting on wild boar deaths in Poland in 2017.

In the course of the event, the GF-TADs experts presented reports and held discussions on the following topics:

- Wild boar ecology (Tomasz Podgórski, Poland);

- The experience of hunters (Linda Dombrovska, Latvia);

- Update on the domestic/wild interface in ASF infected areas (Alexey Igolkin, Russia);

- Update on ASF epidemiology in European wild boar (Vittorio Guberti, Italy).

The next meeting of the GF-TADs Group will take place in the Czech Republic in March 2019.

FGBI “ARRIAH” Press-Office