National Institute of Animal Health (NIAH)

Topics in Animal Health Research 2013

26. A mathematical model of the 2010 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in Japan and evaluation of control measures

Japanese

A large-scale foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) epidemic occurred in Japan in 2010. The epidemic occurred in an area densely populated with cattle and pigs, causing severe damage to local livestock industries. In this study, a mathematical simulation model of FMD transmission between farms was developed to generate the disease spread in the affected area; the effectiveness of several control measures was then evaluated by using the model.
The FMD transmission model demonstrated that prompt culling in infected farms after detection could contribute to reducing the disease spread, decreasing the number of infected farms to 30% of the baseline. Early detection of the first case resulted in a smaller epidemic, even though this condition still included a chance of a large-scale epidemic. As an optimal strategy, preemptive culling demonstrated good effectiveness in the reduction of the number of infected farms. However, applying this strategy in densely populated areas may have practical difficulties because of the large amount of resources required for culling. The 10-km vaccination strategy also showed the potential to contain the epidemic on a small scale, but vaccination strategies are accompanied by difficulties in appropriate management of vaccinated animals and whether vaccinated animals are culled or not. The FMD transmission model developed in this study provides useful information for the consideration of suitable control measures against FMD.
(Viral Disease and Epidemiology Research Division)

References:

Hayama Y. et al (2013) Prev. Vet. Med. 112(3-4):183-193

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