Disease diagnosis and reporting for aquatic animals in OIE Member Countries in the Americas

摘要

One of the most important challenges facing the Americas is the development of the capacity to accurately diagnose and report diseases in aquatic animals. The objectives of this study were to review the capacity of countries within the Americas to diagnose and report selected OIE-Iisted diseases of aquatic animals and to determine the potential effects of human resources and aquaculture production levels on the performance of individual countries.Data from two OIE databases, Handistatus II and the World Animal Health Information Database (WAHID), were analysed for the period from 1996 to 2010. The number of years that each country in the Americas had diagnosed and reported (where applicable) theincidence of Perkinsus marinus in oysters and clams, white spot disease in crustaceans or spring viraemia of carp in carps was recorded. Redundancy analyses were performed using the software CANOCO.Performance in diagnosing and reporting each of these three OIE-Iisted diseases was significantly associated with the amount of aquaculture production and the number of non-private veterinarians in the country. Three groups of countries were determined.The first group included countries with extensive aquaculture production that had maintained their diagnostic capacities for 7-15 years (e.g. Brazil, Chile and the USA). The second group included countries with less than 200,000 tonnes of aquaculture production per year that had maintained their diagnostic capacities for 10-15 years (e.g. Canada, Colombia and Mexico). The third group included countries that had been unable to maintain consistent diagnostic reporting for more than five years (73% of theanalysed countries). Countries in the third group are unprotected against the potential introduction of OIE-Iisted diseases and face problems associated with the export of aquaculture products. The present study emphasised the potential consequences forbiosecurity and trade and the options available to the OIE to build diagnostic capacity in these countries.