Disease exercises

Disease exercises, held at UK or Scottish levels, are designed to test the response of government and other stakeholders to outbreaks of exotic notifiable diseases. EPIC scientists have 'played' in disease exercises on Foot­ and Mouth Disease, Avian Influenza and Classical Swine Fever, providing:

• emergency analysis of movement and demography data;
• rapid risk assessments on rural access and the role of wildlife and wild birds in disease transmission;
• analysis of sequence data in outbreak analyses;
• assessment of surveillance strategies for disease detection;
• assessment of the effectiveness of communication structures between EPIC, Scottish Government and partner organisations.