ANIHWA call 3: ARBONET Epidemiological models for control of arboviral disease for Europe

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Emerging and re-emerging infectious viral diseases continue to challenge both animal and human health around the world. For Europe, vector-borne infections, such as mosquito-borne West Nile fever (WNF), and Rift Valley fever (RVF) and tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), pose a continuous risk of incursions or northward expansion from endemic areas. The drivers of these infections are multifactorial and include increased mobility of human populations, increased global trade in live animals and foodstuffs, and climate change affecting the geographic distribution and competence of vectors. In addition, persistent arbovirus infections in wildlife pose unprecedented challenges to formulation of proper surveillance and control actions, due to the complexity of the interfaces between different host populations.The proposed initiative "ARBONET" will be focused on WNF, CCHF and RVF infections, specifically on development of epidemiological models that can inform risk-based surveillance and interventions that can control disease outbreaks in Europe. The major goal of this joint initiative is to create a multidisciplinary research network combining the expertise of veterinary and human epidemiologists, disease modellers, virologists and arthropod biologists to increase knowledge and understanding that will facilitate rapid control of disease outbreaks. The ARBONET proposal has the following specific objectives: 1) to develop epidemiological models of possible scenarios of CCHF, RVF and WNF spread in Europe, evaluating possible risk-based surveillance approaches and control strategies, 2) to promote epidemiological studies on distribution of viral genetic subpopulations, 3) to increase the knowledge of virus-vector and virus-vertebrate host interactions, and 4) to support dissemination of knowledge on the epidemiology, surveillance and control of these diseases.