A large-scale epidemic of influenza exceeding the ordinary one developed 3 times in the last century. During 40 years following the appearance of Hong Kong influenza virus in 1968, mankind has not been attacked by an unusual epidemic of influenza. Recently, various measures against a world-wide spread of pandemic influenza due to a new type influenza virus have been progressed over the world by a great concern of people. The basic measures against the pandemic are to delay an appearance of the new type virus as possible. It is important to delay the spread of disease if the virus appeared and minimize health damage and social disorder as possible if expanded. Those countermeasures should include not only medical and health care measures but also hygienic ones. In addition, it is important to elicit social understanding and effectively coordinate them. These measures are applicable to an outbreak of not only the new type influenza but also newly appearing infectious diseases as well as previous ones, resulting in strengthening of the whole measures against infectious diseases.
Under these circumferences, a new type influenza virus that was the first-experienced virus for human appeared in Mexico and it was named as “new influenza virus”. This virus originated in North America spread to Europe and all over the world including Asia and the southern hemisphere. In our country, the new influenza virus was detected for the first at Narita Airport Quarantine Station on May 9, 2009 and its confirmed cases were also found at Kobe city on May 16 and at Osaka city on May 17. Then, group infections developed in senior high schools in Hyogo and Osaka prefectures and various countermeasures such as school closures in local communities and waiting at home of people who had close contact with infected persons were taken, resulting that the spread of new type influenza to the general public was fairly repressed in the two prefectures. However, development of the new influenza virus succeeded in various parts of Japan since middle June. In August, the onset of influenza-like diseases became similar to that in December of an average year. In October to November, the status of its infection became similar to that in an average winter and this outbreak was barely controlled in December. In the forth week of 2010, the cumulative number of influenza patients was estimated at more than 20 million. This was larger than the cumulative patient number of 18 million in the season of influenza in 2004/2005, which was the peak for the previous nine seasons. The peak number of patients in 2010 ranked the third among the outbreaks of seasonal type influenza in previous nine years. The period of epidemic was 29 weeks, which was longer than that of seasonal influenza.
The most important measures for the onset of new type influenza (pandemic) are to delay the invasion of epidemic as possible and once it invaded, it is necessary to prevent its rapid spread and lower the peak number of patients. As the results, the termination of epidemic might be postponed, but at present when the epidemic cooled down, it was thought that our original attempts were almost achieved.
Among the patients infected with new influenza virus, some developed severe pneumonia, acute encephalopathy and fatal cases were found. Although there are not a few cases not reported to the Ministry, among 21 million patients (at the week-13 in 2010) in our country, which was reported as the cumulative number of patients till the day of Mar.23, 2010 to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the number of death was 198, which was extremely smaller than those reported in various foreign countries. In our country, the mortality rate of new type influenza was 0.15 for 100,000 patients.
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Epidemiology is the study of diseases in populations and factors associated with them, and quantitative analysis dominates it; however, such conventional methods have several limitations. It is too expensive in resource poor countries and qualitative (eg. anthropologic and sociologic) information necessary for effective and sustainable disease control cannot be obtained.
Participatory epidemiology (PE) was developed to overcome above mentioned problems mainly in developing countries and has been used in the surveillance for important diseases such as rinderpest and avian influenza. The philosophy stands on the fact that traditional communities do have veterinary knowledge accumulated in thousands of years and the principles and methods are based on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). Participatory methods are used to collect epidemiological information and/or to seek sustainable control options. The techniques used in PE are briefly introduced in this paper. Even in developed countries, considering current economic crisis, such low cost methods may be appreciated, and participatory methods can be applied for risk communication with consumers, formulating sustainable disease control options and improvement of veterinary communication at the farm level.

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Rinderpest is a contagious viral disease of domestic (mainly cattle and water buffalo) and wild animals (ex. warthog, giraffe, African buffalo) which can kill over 95% of susceptible animals. At the time of the Meiji era in Japan, rinderpest was rampant. But we successfully eradicated the disease from Japan. After the completion of human smallpox eradiation program in the 20th century, rinderpest was chosen as the 1st animal disease to be eradicated. The Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme introduced performance indicators for the monitoring of rinderpest surveillance activities at the national level. One indicator is a number of stomatitis-enteritis outbreaks reported. Participatory disease search is useful for detecting as many stomatitis-enteritis outbreaks as possible. In areas with high risk of rinderpest, farmers have existing veterinary knowledge which helps increasing sensitivity of the surveillance. Therefore, participatory techniques are integrated as complementary tool into conventional forms of epidemiology. In this presentation, I would like to introduce an application of participatory epidemiology in the rinderpest eradication project in Africa.

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Traditionally, technical guidance aiming at the improvement of the farm productivity has mainly been done, from the local veterinary officers or clinical veterinarians to the farmers. Despite of such efforts, so called one-way guidance sometimes, a large number of farms have not achieved the expected goal yet. Given this situation, this case report describes a trial that adopted the more interactive methodology ‘dialog’ between a farmer and author to drive the good control measure of bovine leukemia focusing on the appropriate colostrum feeding, which is considered to be difficult to conduct in particular.
The dialog consisted of questioning form the author and answering by the famer and questions asked included : what bovine leukemia and its agent are, if the farmer has any problems on it or not, his future plans and so on. The farmer was facilitated to think of each answer by himself with some assistance of veterinary knowledge if needed, and finally, the author asked about the best measure as the farmer’s own practice.
Based on this experience, this methodology is applied to other farmers and they started the feasible and effective colostrum feeding. Among these farmers, the homemade colostrum heating apparatus was prepared in one farm. And this farm successfully decreased the bovine leukemia seroprevalence of young heifers (six to twelve month old) from 36% to zero, and then all the heifers from that farm are now accepted to the common grazing farms.
Questioning makes the farmers think of the solution by themselves. And this is based on the principle called participatory approach. Farmers are expected to have the more proactive determination. In this point of view, veterinarians are recommended to support, not supervise, their decision making process on the animal health unless it is legislation issues.
To improve the farm productivity, farmers should act on their own initiative. And, veterinarians need to incorporate the various approaches as well as conventional supervising methods and try to make the farmers have the further subjective motivation, which is expected to lead to the more refined farm management and further promotion of the livestock industry in consequence.

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Benchmarking systems have been used for improvement of the management of business. In livestock production fields, the benchmarking is used for pig production management. This system will be also improved the herd health management in dairy farms with considering by the farmer. This study was investigated to confirm whether dairy farm data stored were useful for making benchmark focusing on herd health management. Data of 199 dairy farms were obtained from a local agricultural cooperative association in eastern Hokkaido. Total more than 20000 dairy cattle were kept in these farms. Nine indexes of herd health in dairy farms were set in three fields, which were disease, reproduction and milk production. The median was set as representative values, since these data showed nonparametric distribution. The values of some indexes were affected by the housing system or herd scale of dairy farms. This study showed that the benchmarks of herd health management in dairy farms were possible to set using existing dairy farm data in consideration of feeding system.

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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of metabolic and physical indicators in clinical practice that identified dairy cattle at increased risk of diseases after calving. One hundred and twenty-six Holstein cattle from a farm of Hokkaido Prefecture were used in this study. The experimental period was from October 2007 to July 2009. Blood samples were once collected in 2 to 14 days before expected calving in order to determine serum concentrations of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA), beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and apolipoprotein B-100 (apoB). The assessments of body condition score and rumen fill score were also carried out on the same time. The diseases happened within 30 days in milk were checked by a field veterinarian. Around parturition, serum NEFA concentration in heifers was significantly (P<0.01) higher than that in cows, which may suggest that the metabolic difference in both animals. However, similar findings were not observed in other metabolites. The odds of diseases were 3.2 times greater in cows with serum NEFA≥0.4mEq/L. The area under receiver operator characteristic curve in serum NEFA (0.683) was greater than those in other metabolites (BHB, 0.593 ; apoB, 0.343). In assessing the association physical monitoring and parity with the occurrence of disease in heifers and cows using multivariable logistic regression, rumen fill score was related to increased risk of subsequent disease (odds ratio=0.383). From these findings, it is suggested that serum NEFA concentration and rumen fill score before calving are effective predicators.

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In developing countries, food-borne diseases are one of the most important public health problems and animal-source foods cause a large proportion of such diseases. In sub-Saharan Africa where many people live in poverty, the level of food hygiene is very low. This is not only because living environment is generally unhygienic especially in crowded areas but also most of marketed foods are distributed through informal value chains which are not regulated by the governments. For many consumers and decision makers, food security is the priority rather than food safety, and smallholder farmers who are the majority among producers depend on informal markets which are easy to access regardless the hygiene status.
Top-down policy for improvement of food safety may not be successful in such circumstances since stakeholders in market chains are less likely to comply with it and such policy can aggravate poverty by depriving livelihoods of smallholder farmers and participants of informal markets.
The Safe Food, Fair Food (SFFF) project, funded by BMZ, is building capacity in risk analysis, which has greatly improved food safety in developed countries, to resource-poor sub Saharan Africa. Adaption of risk analysis involves participatory methods to assess risks of animal source food borne diseases and explore feasible measures for improvement of food safety driven by consumers and market participants themselves.
The SFFF project has several steps. Firstly a food safety situational analysis is carried out by stakeholders of food safety in the participating countries and problems are identified. Tailored training is given with the collaboration of German institutes (Federal Institute for Risk Analysis : BfR and Free University of Berlin : FUB). The important problems identified are investigated by graduate students using participatory risk analysis. This involves developing solutions for improving food safety while ensuring continued access to markets for smallholder producers and participants in informal marketing. At the same time, capacity to carry out such studies is developed. The results gained from risk assessments are shared among food safety stakeholders in the National Workshops to enhance the use of such results for decision making, to make participatory risk analysis familiar and to facilitate the continued use of this new method in the countries.
The 8 participating countries are Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique and Republic of South Africa and in total 18 students are involved in the research project. A wide variety of studies is being carried out : human and animal brucellosis, E.coli O157 and Salmonella in beef, Staphylococcus aureus in milk, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in smoked fish, Salmonella in chicken, game meat from National Parks, dried beef and slaughtering and consumption of meat in tribal rituals. Initial findings from these are presented.

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The objective of the present study was to determine euthanasia rate and euthanasia risk, and to compare removal patterns between euthanized females and the other females on Japanese commercial farms. The present study was conducted by using lifetime record data of 62,742 females born between 2001 and 2004 on 101 farms. Annualized euthanasia rate was calculated as the number of euthanized females divided by the sum of life days in all gilts and sows, multiplied by 365 days. Euthanasia risk was calculated as the number of euthanized females divided by the number of surviving females at farrowing in each parity. Linear mixed-effects models were performed to compare lifetime measurements. Of the 101 farms, 25 (24.8%) had records of euthanized females. At the farm level, the mean proportion of removed females that had been euthanized (±SEM) on the 25 farms was 1.27±0.38% with a range between 0.06 and 8.44%. At the individual female level, of the 21,094 females on the 25 farms, the proportions of removed females that were euthanized, dead, or culled were 1.7, 9.7, and 88.6%, respectively. Annualized euthanasia rate was 0.63%. Of the 348 euthanized females, 53.7 and 25.0% were euthanized due to downer and locomotor problems, respectively. Mean values of parity at removal and female life days in the euthanized females were 3.3±0.13 and 717.2±18.58 days, respectively. Euthanized females had lower parity at removal and shorter female life days than culled females (P<0.05), but had similar values to dead females. Euthanasia risks in parity 0, 1, and 2 were 0.23, 0.27, and 0.23%, respectively. As parity increased from 3 to 6, the euthanasia risks increased from 0.22 to 0.59%. The percentages of sows euthanized at week 0, 1, and 2 after the last farrowing were 2.7, 21.6, and 8.4%, respectively, whereas those in the dead sows were 9.8, 24.1, and 11.1%, respectively. No difference between the euthanized sows and dead sows was found in the relative frequency of sows removed during the weeks from the last farrowing to removal. In conclusion, few females were euthanized on commercial farms in Japan. The removal pattern of the euthanized females was similar to that of dead females. It is ethical to euthanize a female that is immobilized due to severe lesion or other problems rather than waiting for the female to die.

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In 2009, a swine farm which is known to have high mortality of growing pigs was used for this clinical trial. Ear tags were attached to 105 piglets which were borne in June, 2009 and allocated into 2 nursing houses, house A with relatively good environmental conditions and house B with bad sanitary condition with high mortality. The house B had 12 time dust concentrations, 4 times ammonia concentration, 8 times nitrous oxicide and 2 times methane concentration higher than those measured in house A. The IgA concentration in the saliva of the pigs raised in house B was 4 times higher than those in house A. Total mortality after weaning in this trial was 26.2% (16/61) and 40.4% (17/42) for growing pigs raised in house A and B, respectively. This farm has been suffered severe economical losses due to high mortality of growing pigs and proper intervention, particularly in house B, is urgently required.

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To maintain the health of puppies (<1 year of age), special treatment, which is equal to pediatrics in human medicine, is required. However, in the veterinary medicine, the specialized research for puppies is very limited at the present time. In this study, we statistically analyzed insurance claim data of the 681,039 dogs (female 316,616 ; male 364,423) contracting Anicom to make appropriate advise of animal health care for the owners. Puppies were 212,152 (female 100,509 ; male 114,643) in these dogs. We analyzed the insurance claim data including disease name of puppies, and the incidence of digestive system disease was highest, 12.7%, whereas the incidence in 1 to 10 years of age dogs was the third highest (12.3%). The incidence of parasite, infectious diseases, respiratory disease, damage in puppies were higher than those in 1 to 10 years old dogs. 52.4% of 14,992 dogs with insurance claim as foreign objective in digestive tracts were puppies. 77.8% of 3940 dogs with bone fracture were puppies.
From above results, we think we can prevent onset of foreign object and bone fracture as accidental diseases, in puppies with appropriate advice at appropriate time based on the above analytical data. It is very important to prevent the accidental disease in puppies.

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Equine infectious anemia (EIA) has not been detected since 1993 by the nation-wide surveillance testing at least every five years, therefore it is believed that this disease has been eradicated from Japan. For the purpose of considering effective and efficient surveillance to be adopted under the current EIA situation, we evaluated several surveillance strategies using a transmission model of EIA among non-racehorse. The model incorporated horse movements for generating the spread of between and within four independent sectors, that constitute non-racehorse population, namely, the equestrian sector, private owner sector, exhibition sector and fattening sector.
The number of infected horses and farms after one year from introduction of an infected horse was estimated 14 heads (90%CI : 2-72 heads) and 2 farms (90%CI : 1-8 farms) in the baseline model. Under the current surveillance model, it was estimated that an infected horse was first detected 13 weeks (90%CI : 4-56 weeks) after the disease introduction, the number of horses and farms that have been infected before the detection were estimated 5 head (90%CI : 1-17 heads) and 1 farm (90%CI : 1-2 farms), respectively. A surveillance strategy testing horses in the equestrian sector and private owner sector annually as well as horses for movement detected infected horses earlier than the current surveillance model. However, it increased the number of horses to be inspected per year. Lengthening testing interval from once a year to once every 3 years or every 5years, reduce the number of horses to be tested up to 30-40% with almost equivalent effectiveness of the current surveillance strategy. Using the transmission model of EIA, we could evaluate various surveillance strategies for early detection from the viewpoint of effectiveness and efficiency.
Further refinement of the model, such as incorporating temporary movements of horses or reflecting potential risk of racehorses and imported horses, may provide more useful information for considering applicable surveillance strategies.

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A crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis) is an experimental animal used in medical science field, and over than 5,000 macaque individuals are consuming a year in Japan. In general, the macaques were caught in several South-East Asian countries, viz., Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and they were kept in a captive facility of a southern part of China. And then, according to the Japanese animal quarantine regulation since 2000, the imported animals should be quarantined for at least 30 days. Since 2007, I have been consulted from a veterinary officer belonging to an experimental animal supplying company in Japan with helminths and/or helminthiasis obtained/found from the macaques during the quarantine period. In this paper, 5 cases including the genera Bertiella (Cestoda), Paragonimus (Trematoda), Dipetalonema (Nematoda), Oesophagostomum (Nematoda) and Porocephalus (Linguatulida) are presented, and its epidemiological issues are discussed briefly. The present morphological examination has been supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid (No. 20380163) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan.

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Classical swine fever (CSF) is a highly contagious virus infection of swine caused by classical swine fever virus (CSFV). CSF infections cause significant economic impact and hardship throughout Asia. Improved understanding of the epidemiology of an infectious agent can provide options for the control of disease. Developments in technology have allowed the simplified PCR-mediated amplification of targeted genomic regions and the rapid deduction of nucleotide sequences which can be related to the geographical origin of individual disease outbreaks. This review describes the comparative analysis techniques and molecular epidemiology of classical swine fever viruses in the Asian context.

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From July 2004 to April 2005, total of 494 flies, including 128 houseflies (Musca domestica) and 366 blowflies (Genus Calliphora), were captured at 6 pig farms, at a slaughterhouse and at 2 wet markets in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam to know the role of flies as a transmitter of Salmonella. Salmonella were isolated from 38 (7.7%) of the 494 flies samples. The isolation rates of Salmonella from flies captured at a slaughterhouse (15.5%) were significantly higher than that in pig farms (4.5%) and in wet markets (6.5%). The isolation rates of Salmonella from blowflies (9.8%) were higher than those houseflies (1.6%). From those 38 Salmonella-positive fly samples, 41 Salmonella strains were isolated and 14 serovars were identified. The predominant serovars were S. Typhimurium, S. Panama, S. Newport, S. Derby, S. Bareilly, S. Lexington and S. Anatum. Of the 41 Salmonella isolates examined, 38 (92.7%) showed resistance to at least one or following antibiotics ; SM, OTC, KM, NA, ABPC, SMX, CP, and GM. No isolates showed resistance to CEZ, CTRX and CPFX. Among the resistant isolates, 22 isolates were multi-drug resistance. Flies seem to play an important role, as an epidemiological link between humans and domestic animals in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

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The present study compared economic returns between doubleand triple matings in first-serviced and reserviced female pigs. Our reproductive performance data included 102,553 service records in 117 commercial herds. The service included a singleor more mating events during estrus. The economic models for returns over mating costs per service were constructed by using the data on reproductive performance and economic assumptions. The value for a weaned pig was estimated by the market price per pig minus the costs for feed, vaccines, veterinary treatments, transportation, slaughter fees, labor and utility per pig. Sensitivity analysis was performed to determine a threshold point for the farrowing percentage in the double matings required to exceed the returns in the triple matings. In the first-service group, triple-mated gilts and sows had higher farrowing percentages and number of pigs born alive (PBA) than double-mated gilts and sows (P<0.05). In the reservice group, no differences in farrowing percentage and PBA were found between doubleand triple matings. The value per pig weaned was $101.1. For first-serviced gilts and sows, returns over mating costs for triple matings were higher than those for double matings. We recommend performing triple matings for females to be first-serviced, and double matings for females returning to estrus for maximizing profitability in Japan. Additionally, our sensitivity analysis indicates that the returns in double matings for sows would surpass those in triple matings when producers increase the farrowing percentage by 1.0%.

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From August 2001 to July 2002 and between June and December 2004, fecal samples from 922 children with acute diarrhea admitted to hospitals at Can Tho City, Dong Thap and Soc Trang provinces were examined for the presence of Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157. Salmonella was isolated from 45 (4.9%) of 922 diarrheic children. From the 45 patients, 47 Salmonella strains were isolated and 9 serovars were identified. The predominant serovars were S. London, S. Bareilly, S. Agona and S. Typhimurium. Of the 47 Salmonella isolates examined, 12 (25.5%) of isolates showed resistance to one or more antibiotics. Of 12 resistance isolates, 11 (23.4%) showed multi-drug resistance. Salmonella seems to be an important diarrhea-causing pathogen in children in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. E. coli O157 was not isolated from any children's fecal samples with or without bloody stools.

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The similarity of the patterns of FMD outbreaks in Korea and Japan in 2000 and 2010 indicates that the most likely route of entry of the type O virus in Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan in 2010 was most likely via a person travelling from Korea to Japan. Due to delays in immediate responses and follow-up measures, the disease spread to many parts of Miyazaki Prefecture sacrificing a large number of cattle and pigs.
The main causes of delays in organizing the control measures were :
1) There was no early warning alerting veterinary professionals in the field.
2) There was a delay in recognizing the cause of the disease as the FMD virus.
3) The FMD virus that surfaced in Miyazaki was highly virulent to both cattle and pigs.
4) There was a shortage of burial sites for the large number of sacrificed animals.
5) There is no permanent emergency response unit in Japan to deal with exotic diseases of animals.
Considering the scale of economic losses caused by the disease, drastic reforms are necessary to improve the emergency response systems and also to tighten the quarantine measures on human movement.

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Japan reported to the OIE that the reoccurrence of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was in Miyazaki Prefecture, in April 20, 2010, with 16 beef cattle outbreaks due to serotype O virus by RT-PCR test in National Institute of Animal Health. This was the first occurrence of FMD since March 2000. In the end of April, the outbreaks involved buffalos, cattle and pigs were 12 cases with 4,369 susceptible animals. All animals in the affected farm were destroyed. The stamping-out method and movement restrictions within 10 km around the affected farm have been implemented. In May, the outbreaks were continued severe epidemic and emergency vaccination campaign against FMD was started on 22 May to all domestic susceptible animals kept in unaffected farms in movement control areas established within 10 km. As the end of May, number of the outbreaks was on a steady rise and the epidemic was not resolved. In June 14, the outbreaks were recorded 289 cases with 193,295 susceptible animals.

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[in Japanese]

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