Drivers for emerging issues in animal and plant health

Richardson, Jane; Lockhart, Caryl; Pongolini, Stefano; Karesh, William B.; Baylis, Matthew; Goldberg, Tony; Slingenbergh, Jan; Gale, Paul; Venturini, Tommaso; Catchpole, Mike; de Balogh, Katinka; Pautasso, Marco; Broglia, Alessandro; Berthe, Franck; Schans, Jan; Poppy, Guy

The need and the expectation that control and prevention will involve coordinated action across scientific, organisational, geographical and political boundaries are greater today than at any time before. It is now possible for a person to travel from one side of the globe to the other in less than the time that it takes for most infectious diseases to become symptomatic following exposure to a source of infection. The experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the 2009 influenza pandemic, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and gastrointestinal outbreaks such as that associated with sprouting fenugreek seeds in Germany demonstrates the need for rapid and coordinated international action to control outbreaks and emerging infections. A similar need has become clear after several plant health emergencies, including Xylella fastidiosa, ash dieback and Phytophthora ramorum . International legislation and agreements, such as the EU Decision on Serious Cross-Border Threats to Health (2013) and the International Health Regulations (2005), reflect the need for formalised threat detection and response coordination arrangements at the international level. Coordination could be delivered at the global level, through a global operations room. The purpose of a global operations room, whether it be virtual or a single physical entity, would be to ensure that appropriate decisions are made and appropriate actions taken in response to emerging threats. The function would be to bring together the appropriate information and the appropriate expertise, and to provide the technical and organisational infrastructure to support threat detection and response coordination. There are many questions and challenges that need to be addressed in the setting up of such an operations room, including the establishment of the political mandate and mutual trust required to ensure effective coordination between national and supranational authorities; creating the network of expertise required to enable the operations room to deal with the full range of threats requiring global coordination; developing the technical infrastructure for threat detection and communication, and for coordination of the response; and establishing standard operating procedures for escalation and de-escalation of the threat response, and for command and control arrangements in risk management.