He restated the central role of the 2007 Equine Health and Welfare Strategy for Great Britain in its future success. Aim 2 (Health Surveillance) of the Strategy recognizes that accurate disease prevalence data are a vital prerequisite for defining health and establishing benchmarks for equine welfare and management at both individual horse and population level. Four years on, through a project led by The Blue Cross and the British Equine Veterinary Association, we now have a practical way of collecting disease data through the National Equine Health Surveys (NEHS) and finally have a means of delivering Aim 2. This is a significant step forwards.
Disease surveillance is more complex than might first be imagined and is conducted for a variety of different reasons. To many people, I suspect, disease surveillance means exotic disease surveillance or perhaps contagious or infectious disease surveillance in the broader sense. Surveillance of exotic (notifiable) diseases is provided by Defra and we can be confident that unrecognized notifiable diseases are not circulating in our horse population.
The greater challenge lies with the endemic diseases; diseases probably considered by some horse owners and equine veterinarians as ‘ordinary’ diseases which are simply part of horse ownership and have to be lived with. It is true that by their nature we generally have to find ways of controlling, rather than eliminating, endemic diseases. However, it does not help equine welfare to simply regard endemic diseases as facts of life since this leads to a tolerance of their occurrence and likely under-recognition of their importance. This is particularly true for the non-infectious endemic disease like lameness, colic and skin disease and may, I suspect, also be true for some of the infectious diseases like strangles. At present we do have a useful scheme, the Defra/AHT/BEVA quarterly reports for infectious disease surveillance based on diagnostic laboratory submissions, but we have no surveillance measures in place for non-infectious endemic diseases.
The equine welfare codes of practice have been a very important step forwards in providing a framework for the UK horse industry. To really make the codes work in practice and to underpin them with an evidence base we now need disease surveillance data to provide benchmarks against which health, disease and welfare can be measured. Disease surveillance will allow us to pinpoint problems and if we know the expected levels of disease we can identify changes and implement prevention measures. Importantly, disease prevalence data will extend to practical improvement of equine welfare by underpinning the work of welfare inspectors and veterinary officers. Health benchmarks would be applicable to riding establishment inspections and there would be a valuable opportunity to include such benchmarks into livery yard inspections, when these are eventually introduced. I would like to see health and welfare benchmarks incorporated into existing yard approval schemes with recognition through an equine equivalent of the Red Tractor Assurance scheme for food and farming. Health benchmarks would also provide a solid platform for equine veterinary health plans and have the potential to provide a shift in equine practice from the traditional ‘fire-brigade’ role to a focus on preventive health care.
2011 is a critical year for endemic disease surveillance in the UK. The 2010 pilot of NEHS demonstrated that an online approach using syndromic surveillance for horse owners to record what their horse was doing on the day of the survey was a practical way of collecting endemic disease prevalence data. Although this was a relatively small scale pilot, the 2010 survey has already produced some interesting insights into what we might discover when data are collected directly from owners as opposed to veterinary records or insurance claims. For example, although lameness was the most common syndrome recorded, the high prevalence of skin disease and metabolic disease was a surprise. It is now time for action and for all sectors of the horse industry to take part in the 2011 NEHS surveys: the more data we can collect the more useful the results will be to us all.
The next census week will be on 9-15 May 2011. All keepers and owners of horses are urged to participate, details of all horse owners will remain anonymous. It should only take around 5 minutes to complete. To register online visit www.bluecross.org.uk/NEHS or email NEHS@bluecross.org.uk.