Ben Huntington, GBADs project manager, took part in a Round-Table Discussion with the subject: Moving Forward through Lessons Learned on Response Actions to Aquatic Animal Disease Emergencies at FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy on 16-18th December 2019. The 45 meeting participants, from 18 countries, worked in government ministries, research institutes, academia and private companies.
The participants (1) discussed their experiences and important lesson learned from disease emergency responses, (2) worked together to draft the basis for a Decision Tree for Dealing with Aquatic Animal Mass Mortality Events and (3) following a presentation from Ben Huntington on GBADs, discussed the important next steps to establish a systematic method for assessing the impact of disease in aquatic animals.
GBADs will continue to foster links with the aquaculture sector in both the intensive commercial sector and the more extensive systems used in Lower- and middle-income countries. A great deal of support for the programme was expressed by the meeting participants and the GBADs team look forward to following up with interested parties to explore early opportunities to apply our methodology.