SHIC Directed Research in Vietnam Helps U.S. be Better Prepared for African Swine Fever

A successful series of African Swine Fever research projects in Vietnam is helping the North American pork sector be better prepared to prevent and to respond to the infection.Ten Swine Health Information Center directed African Swine Fever research projects in Vietnam, conducted with support from the National Pork Producers Council and funded by a grant from USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service division, have now concluded.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says this project was inspired by the experience with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea in 2013.

Quote-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

When PED broke in the U.S. in 2013 the National Pork Board had to fund research very quickly to try to get answers of how to manage and how respond to the PED outbreak.We were unprepared for PED and that gave us a lesson about preparedness.

The bottom-line objective of this project through USDA FAS for the U.S. was to learn lessons about the epidemiology and the preparedness, the response, the management of ASF in an outbreak situation in a country that's actually undergoing the outbreak of the virus.It provides for us in North America some real-world experience with managing and responding to ASF outbreaks.

African Swine Fever isn't in North America and we needed to learn lessons about management and response to outbreaks in a country that was actually experiencing it.This was a good opportunity to do that.Thankful to USDA Foreign Ag Service for the opportunity for funding and the I think outcome was that we will be better prepared to react, respond and recover to ASF should it get to North America.

Results of the series of field projects in Vietnam can be accessed through SHIC's website at swinehealth.org.Dr. Sundberg says this body of work will help the U.S. to better prevent or, if we can't prevent, at least respond to and recover from ASF should it get into the U.S. or into North America while at the same time helping response and recovery efforts in Vietnam.