The Manager of the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network says changes in the way swine health data is analyzed have provided a new tool for monitoring trends over time.
At the end of each quarter the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network analyses swine health data provided through surveys of veterinary practitioners and collected from most of the laboratories in the region to assess swine health status.
CWSHIN Manager Dr. Jette Christensen says, for the fourth quarter of 2018, for the first time, that data has been combined for easy comparison providing a new monitoring tool for tracking and comparing trends over time.
It enables us to much better look at what diseases have changed over time, so can we pick up when well known diseases suddenly change and become more of a problem?
We can look at and discuss how we deal with diseases, what the responses to diseases are, how we can control diseases looking at the combined sources, from laboratories, from the swine practitioners and even from abattoirs. We have tools to start our discussion on how to deal with diseases, control them most efficiently much better than we did in the past. We will also be able to maybe more quickly get suspicion on signals or changes in diseases. We have the tools to see if there is new diseases popping up.
That is all improved and that is what we ultimately want to provide to producers, to swine practitioners and to governments in our region.
~ Dr. Jette Christensen, Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network
Dr. Christensen says the network’s policy is to utilize data as it’s provided. She acknowledges data collected from various sources will vary in detail but it is still considered useful.
