Table 2.
Selected quotes on pandemic preparedness and planning in Australia by veterinary informants.
| Over-arching perspectives | |
|---|---|
| Veterinarians within the paradigm of One Health | ‘I think it's that skill of all vets to be constantly comparing.One of the things that differentiates us from quite a few other professions in the health sphere, […], we often don't have all the information on one disease in one species. And soour innate response is always to go through comparative medicine. And I must admit, until maybe about 10, 12 years ago, I thought that everybody thought like that. And I realized that that's actually not the case.Even though I've worked with fantastic people in the medical sphere, they still have a very human-centric focus.’ (V19) |
| Foresight into emerging threats | |
| Horizon scanning | ‘Particularly in recent years with emerging diseases, and particularly a lot of the new emerging diseases in humans originating from animals we had a heightened awareness of these new diseases. At the zoo, infectious diseases are a very, very important part of managing the health of our animals, and we're always considering infectious disease risks and have to keep up to speed with all those issues, in terms of protecting both our animals and our people. So, generally, it's front and centre for us.’ (V25) |
| Recognition of risk factors for emergence | ‘There's so much risk involved in having, particularly wild animals in these kinds of situations.There's wet markets or any kind of wildlife trade where they're stressed, in poor unhygienic conditions, they're mixing with a lot of people, a lot of other species. It's just an absolute disaster from the point of view of potential zoonotic and trans-species infections. And we've known that for a long time.It just actually boggles the mind that we just haven't even really acted on this beforehand, because it is an existential threat to our race and to our societies and our communities.’ (V30) |
| Shortcomings in national preparedness | |
| Lack of multi-agency planning | ‘We did have a pandemic plan, and we've had it many, many years. And it's been practiced a few times, but I think it was very health oriented. Because it didn't really address things like business continuity during pandemics for all areas of society.The original plans […] it has been very, very human oriented and they need to actually broaden that.’ (V33) |
| Failure to heed lessons from previous outbreaks | ‘Someone asked me recently were the lessons from the Callinan enquiry into biosecurity breaches in equine influenza, did that inform anything in the department'sresponse?I would hesitate to say that I don't thinkanyone in public health management would know of that inquiry, or what occurred in that outbreak. And so, the parallels to the breakdown of quarantine in hotels in Victoria that led to the second wave, the shortcomings and cheap skating on how quarantine's managed that leads to a massive event is, the false economy of that, is what is clearly written in the Callinan enquiry.You can have the rules in place, but if they're not followed, or the system managed inappropriately, there's key lessons there.’ (V35) |
| Lack of funding for prevention | ‘But you know, prevention is far more cost effective and far more effective than other methods.But I'm not sure that people want toinvest in prevention. Becauseyou spend a lot of money on something and you can't see a result. And it's very hard to keep governments and funders motivated to keep spending money on something when you can't prove that you're actually achieving anything.’ (V36) |
| Lack of companion animal authority | ‘I mean, companion animals aren't a part of our emergency animal disease responses.How you deal with companion animals, like dogs and cats in the state of an emergency animal disease is just not clear. Because who are the people that make decisions about dogs and cats? And is there any authority that could help make those decisions or access all the owners?We need to find some way to bring that in because certainly my experience was that the [Chief Veterinary Officers] of the states weren't comfortable with making decisions on companion animals or even having their offices deal with companion animal inquiry.’ (V05) |
| Optimising national preparedness | |
| Improving existing systems | ‘I think the big thing is around resource sharing. So even if the systems themselves aren't identical but set up in such a way that you can easily share resources, and not just easily, but quickly share it. And I think that's where practicing exercises in peace-time is really important for things like that.Because […] I don't think this is the last of these sorts of pandemics we're going to see, it's just going to become more frequent.I think the need to work with multiple agencies in responsesis going to become the norm. And I think it's a matter of ensuring that processes, governance systems are all in place to ensure that we can mobilize things quickly and efficiently.’ (V20) |
| Linking scientists and practitioners | ‘I think I've learnt that there is a real need for bridging between the scientists and the practitioners.I think maybe we need some of us to position ourselves as that intermediate bridge.There's so many publications that are coming out, but they just don't make their way to the average practitioner.And what is going to change the behaviour of practitioners?’ (V08) |
| Linking experts and government | ‘What we should learn from this in Australia is that we need better structures in place for collaborations between experts and collaborations into government agencies. We need better surge force plans. Because what has been incredibly challenging in Victoria is just actually getting enough people to be able to work in the response, both in technical roles like epidemiologists, also in contact tracing and some of the other logistics roles.And I think it really underlines nationally how important some type of One Healthagency is to be able to get national coordination for these types of diseases, especially if the next one has ongoing, zoonotic transmission.’ (V16) |