The Veterinary Bureau (VB) of MOA and FAO Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases Operations (FAO-ECTAD) China Office jointly held the West-China Epidemiology Training Program for Veterinarians (ETPV) in Xining of Qinghai from July 1 to 4, 2014.
Mr. Wang Gongmin, Deputy Director-General of VB and Prof. John Edwards, Senior Technical Coordinator of FAO attended the opening ceremony of ETPV.
Veterinary epidemiology is the study of disease patterns within animal populations, and it may provide key scientific basis for major animal disease prevention & control.
Over recent years, MOA and FAO have co-organized the China Field Epidemiology Training Program for Veterinarians (FETPV) series with an aim to enhance China's epidemiological research capacity. Based on years of pragmatic cooperation, the two sides have built up a platform for expertise communication and technical team training, and made significant improvements in the epidemiological research mechanisms.
It is believed that the FETPV has greatly reinforced China's strengths in major animal disease prevention & control, and the West-China ETPV in Qinghai is an important supplement and extension of the overall national FETPV.
Given the large livestock population and extensive farming pattern as well as the special difficulties of vaccination in the western region, the West-China ETPV curricular mainly focused on the application of veterinary epidemiological research tools, technologies, methods, and so forth.
The Western-China ETPV was organized by China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center (CAHEC), and the trainees included technical staff from animal disease prevention & control authorities of Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia.