SOUND control members participated in SVEPM 2021

From 24th to 26th March 2021 the Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (SVEPM) hosted a virtual annual conference. This year, the 212 conference attendees were offered a unique digital experience as SVEPM’21 was organised using conference software. The participants were able to engage in interactive workshops, live scientific sessions, poster viewing rooms and discuss any topic of interest in the presenters’ video-conference room or through a chat portal. SOUND control members also actively participated in this digital conference and represented our Action.
Four excellent oral presentations were given by members of SOUND control during the live sessions. Annika Van Roon gave an insight into output-based standards and the challenges of modelling freedom from infection “Confidence of freedom of infection with BVDV in several European countries: application of the STOC free model”. Inge Santman-Berends, the coordinator of SOUND control presented research entitled: “Evaluating the association between calf mortality and implementation of data-driven tools to improve calf rearing in Dutch dairy herds”. Ranya Özcelik presented her work on the development of community-based surveillance: “Investigating opportunities for and challenges towards establishing community-based surveillance of equines in Switzerland”. Finally, Christine Fourichon gave the Gareth Davies lecture entitled “Controlling infectious diseases: how does the interplay between field problems and epidemiological research leads to success”.
Furthermore, two posters from SOUND control were displayed at the conference. The first poster presenting the overall progress of SOUND control was presented by Maria Guelbenzu-Gonzalo. The second poster presented the existence and quality of data on control programmes for non-EU regulated cattle diseases – results of Working group 2 and was presented by Egle Rapaliute.
The conference was closed by a speech of the new President of the SVEPM, Gerdien van Schaik, WG2 leader of our Action.

Congratulations to all participants for their excellent work and to the new President of the Society!