Hands across the Tasman: How the International Animal Health Emergency Reserve would work

Laboratory staff from New Zealand were deployed to Aaustralia under the principles of the International Aanimal Hhealth Emergency Rreserve (IAHahERr) agreement.
Laboratory staff from New Zealand
were deployed to Aaustralia under the
principles of the International Aanimal
Hhealth Emergency Rreserve
(IAHahERr) agreement.

During the recent outbreak of equine influenza (EI) in Australia, Australia requested bilateral assistance from New Zealand under the principles of the International Animal Health Emergency Reserve (IAHER) agreement. MAF Biosecurity New Zealand (MAFBNZ) staff were rapidly deployed to Australia from a number of directorates, including Response and Surveillance groups (Post Border), Incursion Investigation and the Animal Health Laboratory at Wallaceville (see Biosecurity 81 for articles on the experience of MAFBNZ staff in Australia). Assistance was provided over a period of three months for secondment periods averaging two weeks per person.

The IAHER is a multilateral agreement between Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand. The agreement was established to provide support and assistance to member countries during exotic disease outbreaks, where an affected country's resources and expertise are overwhelmed by the demands of the incursion. The IAHER outlines the procedures that a recipient country must follow when requesting assistance from the donor countries. Because these procedures have been pre-agreed, the IAHER can be implemented quickly and efficiently in the event of a disease outbreak – important when time is so critical.

Our resources could be exhausted

MAFBNZ is a signatory to the IAHER because any larger-scale disease outbreak may soon exhaust our resources and expertise, and we would then require assistance from overseas. In addition, valuable expertise can be utilised from countries that have recently had similar outbreaks. For example, the recent outbreaks of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in England have created a large pool of technical expertise and wide array of FMD response policies and plans that would be extremely valuable to any of the other signatory countries should they experience an outbreak within their own borders.

The experience gained by participants in the Australian EI outbreak has been invaluable to MAFBNZ at several levels. The laboratory managers and technicians were stationed at laboratories in New South Wales and Queensland. Not only were they able to provide valuable help to the Australians, but they also brought back ideas and methods to improve the capacity of MABNZ's Animal Health Laboratory to deal with large numbers of horse blood and nasal swab samples, while maintaining routine day-to-day animal tests for both export and import.

Several members of the Incursion Investigation team were deployed in the field with Australian epidemiologists in Queensland and New South Wales to collect and analyse information to assist in the response to EI, or were stationed at disease control centres where they provided epidemiological assistance. They are now using the insights gained in Australia to review and improve the MAFBNZ EI response operational plans.

Knowledge applied to New Zealand plans

Members of the Animals Response team were stationed at local disease control centres or at disease control headquarters of the Queensland State Department of Primary Industries or at Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries offices in Canberra. The team members helped draft the policies and plans for response activities, including those relating to movement controls, zoning and premises controls and surveillance. The knowledge and experience gained has been used to draft response policies and review overall response preparedness in New Zealand, to enhance MAFBNZ's state of preparedness for an EI response.

The assistance provided to Australia has generated significant goodwill, and the role played by this group has been gratefully acknowledged. The experience has also benefited New Zealand, as the participants have returned with a fresh perspective on what needs to be done to improve MAFBNZ's response preparedness, as well as a greater realisation of the complexities of a large disease response operation.

All participants in this EI response, and those involved in the broader IAHER arrangements, have forged valuable links with overseas colleagues that will be valuable in the future. The contacts made and links to other government organisations reinforce a sense of community and provide security in the knowledge that help is only an e-mail or a phone call away.

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Page last updated: 19 June 2008