The WOAH Reference Laboratory for FMD at the Pirbright Institute (Pirbright) will assist The African Union Panafrican Veterinary Vaccine Centre (AU-PANVAC) to establish the capability required to undertake independent assessment of the quality of FMD vaccines for use in Africa. The main activities within the project will be preparation and collation of reference materials, validation of methodologies, and technology transfer supported by training missions.
Objectives
The overall goal of the project is to implement an independent FMD vaccine quality control system for Africa. This will be met by achieving the following objectives:
- Coordination with national and international FMD laboratories to establish a panel of characterised reference FMD viruses representative of circulating strains in different parts (endemic pools) of Africa
- Coordination with vaccine manufacturers to establish a panel of vaccine viruses along with the required permissions for their use and to agree access arrangements to large animal challenge facilities
- Obtain and prepare bulk quantities of vaccine-specific, bovine reference antisera for each of the vaccine strains in the above panel
- Preparation of simplified serological tests for vaccine selection and monitoring that can be deployed at AU-PANVAC
- Training and technology transfer
Eastern Africa FMDV Reference Antigens FMD vaccine evaluation for East Africa
Defining serological cut-offs for FMD vaccines
These pages will be updated with further details soon