The project WiLiMan-ID (WIldlife, LIvestock, huMan and Infectious Diseases) focuses on the ecology of five animal infectious diseases identified as high-priority by the European that circulate among livestock (poultry, pigs, farmed deer, or horses), wildlife (birds, wild pigs, or wild deer), and humans. These diseases include African swine fever (ASF), African horse sickness (AHS), avian influenza (AI), West Nile fever (WNF), and chronic wasting disease (CWD), and cause significant health and economic damages to agriculture and/or pose serious risks to human health.
WiLiMan-ID has two primary objectives:
• To identify key drivers of the emergence, re-emergence, and spread of IDs studied in WiLiMan-ID by integrating data across multiple levels (pathogen > host > host communities > territory) while considering the impact of global changes;
• To develop and deliver innovative strategies and tools for farmers, health authorities, and policymakers to enhance the prevention, surveillance, and control of these diseases, promoting more effective and sustainable disease management.
To reach these objectives the project is organized into several interconnected areas of focus that address specific aspects of disease dynamics and aim at:
• improving methods for the sensitive and accurate detection and identification of pathogens and their associated variants in changing, complex environments.
• identifying the mechanistic drivers promoting an increase in pathogen virulence, transmissibility and/or host-shift.
• assessing the impacts of host factors as key determinants of pathogen evolution and dynamics, notably those related to vaccine responses or pre-existing immunity to viral infection.
• identifying transmission routes and assesses the role of the host spatio-temporal distribution (including vectors), the environment (pathogen reservoirs in wildlife, impact of global changes on migration routes), and management practices (farming, trade, transport) in pathogen spread.
• developing next-generation analytical approaches for designing effective strategies and methods for surveillance, prevention, and control within a context of global changes.
• disseminating and converting the results into user guides, training materials, and communication tool kits to optimise their exploitation by relevant stakeholders