Project description
Preventing and managing infectious diseases in animals
Several infectious diseases in animal populations are causing significant economic damage to farm systems and threatening human health. These diseases include avian influenza, African swine fever, West Nile fever, African horse sickness and chronic wasting disease, and have been identified by the EU as high-priority issues. The EU-funded WiLiMan-ID project will address the complexity and the dynamic of host-pathogen interactions for these diseases. The project will identify the main drivers promoting their emergence and dissemination as well as transmission routes in changing environments by integrating data at different scales and exploring the impact of environment and management practices on disease transmission. The project will develop analytical methodologies to provide farmers, health services, and policymakers with innovative prevention, surveillance, and control strategies.
Objective
WiLiMan-ID addresses the complexity and the dynamics of the host-pathogen interactions for five animal infectious diseases (IDs) that are ranked as high priority by the EU (Avian influenza, African swine fever, West Nile fever, African horse sickness, and Chronic wasting disease). These IDs circulate in livestock and wildlife and, at the human-animal interfaces: two are causing severe economic losses to farming systems and three represent a threat to human health. The main objective of WiLiMan-ID is to identify key factors driving their emergence and dissemination in ever-changing environments by integrating data at different scales (pathogens>host>community of hosts>territory) and, to provide farmers, health services and policy makers with innovative strategies and methods for prevention, surveillance and control for the IDs considered in WiLiMan-ID and beyond.
To meet this objective, WiLiMan-ID will in particular:
- Improve methods for sensitive and accurate detection and identification of pathogens and their variants in complex environments.
- Identify drivers promoting the increase in pathogen virulence, transmissibility and/or host-shift.
- Assess the impact of host factors as a key parameter of pathogen evolution and dynamics, such as vaccination or pre-existing immunity to viral infection.
- Identify transmission routes, the role of vectors, the impact of the environment (pathogen reservoirs in wildlife, global change impact on migration routes) and of the management practices (farming, trade, transport) on pathogen dissemination and transmission.
- Develop next-generation analytical approaches for optimized surveillance and management strategies of IDs, within a context of global changes.
- Disseminate and communicate the results to stakeholders and engage in further co-innovation. Convert the results into user guides, training materials and communication tool kits to optimise their exploitation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-02-two-stage
See other projects for this callFunding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
75007 Paris
France