Disease reporting

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I know not where

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882

The raison d'être of a veterinary profession in any country is that it should serve that country's society by maintaining the health and welfare of its animals and contribute to the health and welfare of its people.

Integral to the profession carrying out its function is knowing the diseases that are prevalent among the various mammalian, avian, aquatic, and reptilian species under its care. In Canada, this knowledge is of particular importance to federal veterinarians, who have the responsibility of keeping the country's trading partners informed of the status in Canada of those diseases that are of concern to them. But it is also of importance to other public and private veterinarians in their care of the public's animals and protection of the public's health.

The availability of this knowledge is dependent on there being an efficient disease surveillance and reporting system. Several years ago, federal veterinarians established the Canadian Animal Health Network (CAHNet) (1,2), which provided the infrastructure for information regarding the occurrence of reportable diseases and other diseases of concern to Canada's trading partners and its livestock industry. The infrastructure was revised in the year 2000 to provide the provinces with a greater say within CAHNet and to provide for a better integration of uniquely federal, federal and provincial, and provincial initiatives (3).

Among the sources of this information are the commodity sectors, including horses, game ranches, and zoos; private veterinary practitioners, federal and provincial field veterinarians, and food inspection veterinarians; private, federal, provincial diagnostic, and veterinary college diagnostic laboratories; the Centre for Coastal Health; and the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre. At the same time, federal veterinarians are monitoring disease situations elsewhere in the world, so as to be able to warn and guard against the introduction of a foreign animal disease.

A bulletin is published by CAHNet once or twice a year and distributed to Canadian industry sectors, all large animal practitioners, the veterinary colleges, Canadian federal and provincial veterinarians, United States federal and state veterinarians, and a number of government and academic epidemiologists (4). The CAHNet Bulletin is also posted online and thus available for anyone to browse (5).

The Bulletin contains informative articles by federal and provincial veterinarians, federal and industry CAHNet partners, and others on such topics as CAHNet activities, emerging diseases, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, production limiting diseases, preparedness for and action plans in the event of an outbreak of a foreign animal disease, regionalization, reports from the provinces, and Canada's annual zoosanitary report to the Office International des Epizooties. Some of the provincial diagnostic laboratories also publish, in print and online, regular newsletters reporting disease occurrences (6,7,8).

It would be to the advantage of the profession if the occurrence of a broader range of diseases in a wider range of species across the country were to be published regularly (monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly); for example, as the Cross Canada Disease Report feature of The Canadian Veterinary Journal, or on the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) Web site.

Most of the information must already be available in the records of private, veterinary college, provincial, or federal diagnostic laboratories. So, with the availablity in present-day technological communication, it should be possible to assemble the data in a common format by using a standard nomenclature, for example, The Systematized Nomenclature of Human (and Veterinary) Medicine (SNOMED) (9), and a standard method of automating the transfer. In this way, the CVMA would be providing a real service to the profession in fulfilling its raison d'être.