2020, back to Chicago ?

The planned dates for CRWAD this year are the first weekend of December, so the meeting 2020 may be organised in Chicago, 5-6 December. 

We will keep you informed !

[relayed from EFSA & ECDC] 

• In 2018, 358 confirmed brucellosis cases in humans were reported in the EU.
• The EU notification rate was 0.08 cases per 100,000 population, which was the lowest notification rate reported since the beginning of the EU‐level surveillance.
• Compared with 2017, the total number of Brucella‐positive or ‐infected cattle herds, sheep flocks and goat herds in the not officially free regions further decreased by 13% and by 12%, respectively.
• During recent years, the proportion of brucellosis‐positive cattle herds, sheep flocks and goat herds in not officially free regions in Italy and Portugal decreased. In Spain and Croatia, eradication of brucellosis in cattle, sheep and goats is within reach with almost no positive herds reported for these last years.
• Brucellosis in cattle and in sheep and goats is still endemic in southern regions in Italy with the highest prevalence in Sicily and in Greece and Portugal. Greece reported the highest notification rate of confirmed cases in humans, 10 times higher than the EU average, while at the same time reporting an enzootic situation in animals: 1% infected cattle herds and 3% infected sheep and goats herds on the Greek islands whereas from Continental Greece data were lacking.
• Brucellosis is still an animal health problem with public health relevance in southern Europe/in countries that are not officially free of brucellosis.

[relayed from Animals, 9(11), 922]  Even if it is an important achievement from a biodiversity conservation perspective, the documented increase in abundance of the four native European wild Caprinae (Rupicapra rupicapra, R. pyrenaica, Capra ibex, C. pyrenaica) can also be a matter of concern, since tighter and more frequent contact with sympatric livestock implies a greater risk of transmission of emerging and re-emerging pathogens.

This article reviews the main transmissible diseases that, in a European scenario, are of greater significance from a conservation perspective. Epidemics causing major demographic downturns in wild Caprinae populations during recent decades were often triggered by pathogens transmitted at the livestock/wildlife interface