STSM Utrecht University (August 2019)

STSM Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands (August 2019)

I had the great opportunity to collaborate with the working group 2 (WG2) of the SOUND control project during a 2-week Short term scientific mission (STSM) in Utrecht. This STSM was led by Professor Gerdien van Schaik and Annika van Roon from the Department of Farm Animal Health of the University of Utrecht. It was my privilege to collaborate and to be assisted by Dr. Inge Santman-Berends. The aim of this STSM was to design a data collection matrix for collecting information useful to estimate disease freedom from different control programs (CPs) for a range of infectious cattle diseases.

I was lucky to start my STSM based on the previous STSM performed by Violeta Muñoz and experience of MSc Annika van Roon. The main achievement of this STSM was designing a draft data collection matrix for collecting data useful to estimate disease freedom from different CPs for a range of infectious cattle diseases in European countries accompanied by an explanatory word document. The data collection framework is designed for Paratuberculosis, Bovine Viral Diarrhoea and Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis, however, it is foreseen to be appropriate for other non-regulated cattle disease, including vector-borne disease. This version of the data collection tool will be presented during the WG2 workshop in Zurich in early November 2019.

It was my top priority plan to visit Utrecht University as one of the leading word veterinary education and it comes now to the reality thanks to SOUND control STSM. I had an opportunity to visit one of the largest farm animal laboratories (Royal DG), at Deventer and smallest but gorgeous city in Netherland, Bronkhorst.

This STSM allowed me to be in contact with the academic and professional staff at the University of Utrecht and GD Animal Health in Deventer, the Netherland. This will be used for further collaboration and joint project applications.

Professor Xhelil KOLECI
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania