The BioSIRT log (BLog) July 2009

Collaboration

South Australia declared EmergencyReady.

Dr Rob Rahaley is the newest member of the National BioSIRT Standards Committee (NBSC). Rob will be representing the Animal Health Committee (AHC).

The AHC has just formed an Information Needs Working Group, which had their first meeting on 24 June, 2009.

Peter Frecklington from the NCT is a member and his participation will support communication and collaboration between this new group and the NBSC. There is further information on this new working group over the page.

Victoria will be conducting a Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) exercise; named exercise DIVA, during November, 2009. Whilst there will be no direct BioSIRT involvement, Victoria have offered input data (forms) to other jurisdictions who may wish to conduct a similar exercise involving BioSIRT.

Discussions have begun with South Australia and Western Australia on their plans to conduct an FMD exercise using BioSIRT in November, 2009.

Consistency

The Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) template was completed and submitted for review by the NBSC in June. Comments on the FMD template can be provided through the NBSC members.

Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals; commonly cattle, buffalo, pigs, sheep, and goats.

FMD is highly contagious, spreading by aerosols and movements of infected or contaminated animals , products, objects and people.

Incubation can be as short as two to three days. Animals are infectious before showing clinical signs are evident, allowing the disease to spread prior to detection.

Symptoms can include acute lameness, salivation (pictured), vesicles in the mouth and on the feet, and/or on the teats, fever and a considerable drop in milk yield (in cattle) and abortion.

If FMD is suspected, the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) is to be informed. Specimens would be forwarded to the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) for emergency disease testing. A laboratory diagnosis can be made in 3-4 days.

Cattle, buffalo and sheep can remain long-term carriers. Cattle may continue to harbour the virus for over 2 years, and sheep for 9 months. Diseased products i.e. meat, dairy products, skins and hides etc. are also a transmission risk.

A major outbreak of FMD occured in the United Kingdom in 2001. It caused serious production losses and was a major constraint to international trade in livestock and their products. Australia is currently FMD free. 

Chevron The Gorgon Project

Barrow Island (pictured) is the second largest island off the Western Australian coast. With no introduced species, the island is an ecological marvel, becoming a Class A Reserve for flora and fauna in 1910. West Australia Petroleum (WAPET), granted a prospecting license in 1964, soon discovered oil.

Chevron assumed ownership of WAPET in 2000, and the island is now the biggest onshore oilfield developed in Australia, producing 9,000 barrels of oil per day.

A strict environmental program, which protects the island's flora and fauna, like the golden bandicoot (pictured), has enabled the petroleum activities to coexist with the island's Nature Reserve status. Chevron is operator of the Gorgon Project, a plan to develop the Greater Gorgon gas fields; Australia's largest known gas resource. The project involves subsea pipelines to Barrow Island and gas processing facilities on the island.

Chevron are currently considering BioSIRT for the purpose of quarantine surveillance and ecological surveys for the Gorgon Project.

The template for Urban Surveillance is currently being developed. The Urban Surveillance project aims to pilot the use of Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs) through the deployment of an urban surveillance application and targetted post harvest grain storage surveillance. The data collected will be aggregated in BioSIRT with the longer term aim of directly interfacing the PDAs to BioSIRT.

The Application

Version 1.2 was released on 4 June, 2009 and loaded to the National BioSIRT Reference Library. A minor patch to correct an 'audit table trigger' was released on 23 June, along with the release of a combined patch to incorporate the new version release and the correction patch.

Version 2.0 is scheduled for release on 28 August, 2009

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Training

User Training was delivered to twenty Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) staff members in early June. Kymme Hoadley and Marg Coonan-Jones co-facilitated the training to staff of the Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer (OCVO), Office of the Chief Plant Protection Officer (OCPPO), Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS), Australian Plague Locust Commission (APLC) and the Invasive Marine Program.

The training provided staff with an invaluable overview of BioSIRT functions, and of the application. The training facilitators received positive feedback from the session.

Coming Events…

The next scheduled National Administrator Training will be held at the NSW DPI offices in Cronulla, Sydney on 15-17 September 2009. Two places remain!  For nominations, contact 02 6272 4645.

BioSIRT's current position on...

What Templates are...

A Template is a BioSIRT construct whereby a number of elements are combined to provide the framework for recording, organising, presenting and outputting information related to biosecurity activities. A template is designed to be a self-contained module in BioSIRT for the management of information relating to a specific emergency response (Incident) or recording routine surveillance activities (Project).

Each Template is completely customisable by a BioSIRT Administrator and is tailored very specifically for the activities they are designed to manage. This in turn simplifies the BioSIRT application for users. For example FMD would have its own Template as would the Urban Surveillance Project.

All aspects of Template building and application are controlled by BioSIRT Administrators who have been trained in the template build method to ensure a consistent and high quality of BioSIRT templates is maintained.

A Template can be exported from one installation of BioSIRT and imported into another. Once imported, the Template creates the User environment, known as a Workspace.

Nationally, templates are managed through the NBSC. A number of emergency response templates are being built to nationally agreed standards. These will then be available from the National Reference Library for use by all/any jurisdictions in the event of a disease or pest outbreak.

Special Projects - AHC Information Needs Working Group

Animal Health Committee (AHC) has recently formed an AHC Information Needs Working Group. The Group had their first face-to-face meeting in Melbourne on 24 June, 2009. Members of the group include BioSIRT, AAHL, Animal Health Australia, jurisdictional and DAFF representatives.

The group aims to consider and document the information needs for Emergency Animal Disease (EAD) management, and to describe the reporting requirements for the management of an EAD response at the national and jurisdictional levels.

The group will maintain on-going collaboration with the NBSC to ensure that BioSIRT reporting capability meets the described information and reporting requirements.

The group recognised that not all of the data available in a response would need to be shared, but that shared data should be limited to the minimum needed for reporting and analysis at the appropriate level. Such data would be in two forms-'hard data' (quantitative data for analysis) and 'soft data' (narrative data).

Seven categories of reports appropriate to an EAD response were identiDied for development. Draft report definitions are expected to be completed and available for comment by end July/mid-August.