Simulation exercise: Bee disease in Australia

Dr Robyn Martin, Acting Chief Veterinary Officer, Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, Canberra, Australia, would like to inform the OIE that a simulation exercise, Exercise BEE PREPARED, will take place across Australia from March until July 2018. Exercise BEE PREPARED aims to advance Australia’s capability to rapidly and effectively respond to a detection of Varroa destructor (Varroa mite) with the objective of achieving eradication.

The objectives for the exercise are to:

• Develop agreed national minimum standards for critical aspects of the immediate response activities;
• Develop or review the initial response strategies from each participating jurisdiction; and

• Facilitate the development of checklists and protocols for actions undertaken in responding.

The exercise will be a functional exercise consisting of several one-day workshops in participating Australian jurisdictions, to test their individual processes, capability and capacity. At each workshop there will be parallel activity streams; short term (day 2 – 7) planning by the incident management team will take place at every workshop and, where possible, initial field surveillance at the site of detection. The jurisdictional workshops will be held between 13 March and mid-June 2018. Information from each workshop will contribute to a national workshop that will be held in early July 2018. The scenario will be tailored to each jurisdiction and will be based on a report of a suspect mite in a peri-urban environment with a number of movements requiring trace forward and trace back activities.

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World Animal Health Information and Analysis Department
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
[email protected]