This project was initiated to address the ongoing problem of poor reporting of animal diseases in PNG where veterinary or allied animal health resources are limited, livestock production is often at small holder or subsistence levels, and infrastructure is limited.
The main objective is to develop systems that are sustainable, simple to operate, provide a basic set of animal population data, and estimates of the impacts estimates of disease on the production system. The underlying methodology is based on the observation and reporting by farmers of the effects of disease on their own animals Templates are used to ensure consistency of reporting for populations and disease syndromes.
Project veterinary staff have completed five visits to PNG and established and monitored the major collaborator sites in accordance with the project milestones.
The National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) is the major collaborator in the project providing staff at Port Moresby, Rabaul, Goroka and Lae.
The Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) has provided transport and staff for the Women in Agriculture settlement participating sites at Port Moresby. Provincial Department of Livestock officers are assisting on-going contact with village livestock owners in Goroka and Rabaul.
The University of Goroka have provided a strong point of contact for the Goroka village livestock owners and designed the social survey of livestock owners. The University of Technology at Lae has assisted this design and students from the two institutions will collate and analyse the survey responses as part of their agricultural extension course work. There has been a degree of difficulty in obtaining the services of a skilled collaborator to assist in the design and validation of the social survey. Many of the resident PNG sociologists are fully engaged in work associated with the Millennium Development Goals. It is possible this is a reflection of the decline in investment in agriculture in PNG and will improve as the National Agricultural Development Program (NADP) funds are delivered. Valuable voluntary input into the survey has been supplied by Dr Gilbert Hiawalyer of United Nations Population Fund, Port Moresby.
The Lutheran Development Service (LDS) based in Lae facilitated a training program for agricultural trainers associated with the Yungpela Didiman program. This has resulted in reporting sites at Madang and Mount Hagen and in the future a village located near Teleformin in Western Province.
Two template reporting tools have been developed and revised after initial use at the project sites. Templates were developed for pigs and chickens as they were the most prolific of livestock kept in the project sites and also the animals that underpin the village livestock food and income streams. Goats were also considered but have been left out of the establishment phase of the project as they are limited in distribution and often associated with other development projects for their establishment and integration into PNG agriculture systems.
The templates enable village livestock owners to record information on chicken and pig populations, reproductive rate and end use of the livestock including sale at market or family food production. The templates also record syndromes of skin, intestinal, respiratory and nervous diseases.
A social survey designed to capture the attitudes of livestock owners to reporting disease and the keeping of livestock is in the process of finalisation for data gathering in mid 2009.
Initial visits to collaborators established collaborator sites at Port Moresby, Rabaul, Goroka and Lae. The collaborators include the major animal health and production government agencies as well as agricultural tertiary institutions and non government agencies. Subsequent visits have conducted training of collaborators and village livestock owners at the four sites and reviewed the use of the reporting tools
An employee of NAQIA is enrolled at James Cook University with support from an Australian Development Scholarship (ADS) The student will use data generated from the project reporting templates to complete a masters program in animal health.
Planning for the Australian reporting component is underway with Screw worm fly being the target disease for northern Australia. The intention is to seek assistance from indigenous communities in northern Queensland to record potential screw worm fly wound sites on pigs captured or seen during hunting activities. Wild game harvesters have not been included as their activities are too ephemeral for a reliable reporting system for screw worm fly risk.
Discussions are also in train to finalise the support for analysis of data with Murdoch University. This component was delayed due to the temporary absence of the collaborator.
Priorities for the immediate future include the transfer of hard copy data to an electronic relational database and the analysis of the social survey against the available syndromic health data.

The project researches livestock owner reporting systems and tools for assessing management options for endemic and emerging livestock diseases of pigs and poultry at four sites in PNG. Disease reporting and information systems are important for any country dependent on livestock production for food security or export wealth generation. In most Pacific Island nations and in particular Papua New Guinea, the animal health systems are under-resourced at present, there is restricted capacity to undertake livestock surveillance or investigation in remote areas and systems to record and analyse livestock population health are not in general usage.
The project has encouraged the four major collaborators to refine the reporting structures and data collections systems. A major site for PNG livestock and agricultural production is the highlands based around Goroka. University of Goroka teaching staff in collaboration with National Agriculture Quarantine & Inspection Authority (NAQIA) personnel have been active in the progress of the social surveys and extension of the results into the teaching of agricultural science to their student agricultural teachers. The result is active incorporation of both the identified social constraints and the value of increased knowledge of dynamics of disease within livestock populations being incorporated directly into the agricultural education curriculum.
The second site coordinated by the Women in Agriculture at Eight Mile settlement in Port Moresby has identified the relative low risk of this settlement for animal disease epidemics. It was previously thought that populations of animals would be unstable but at least in this settlement the reported populations are low and tend to be mainly locally derived day-old chickens for sale at local markets.
The third site on the island of New Britain includes villages that were depopulated of chickens to control a Newcastle Disease outbreak in 2006. This site is coordinated by NAQIA and provincial livestock officers from the Department of Agriculture. Data have demonstrated no return of high mortality and therefore confirmed the success of the program for eradication of the disease.
The final site is coordinated by the Lutheran Development Service (LDS) based at Lae in Morobe province. Due to a number of factors related to remoteness, very few data sets have been obtained. This site has demonstrated the complexity of operating in remote areas; many villages are not able to reliably communicate with external advisors and in time the message is diluted and other priorities intervene to disrupt the flow of information. Improved contact with experienced animal health staff is essential in these situations to obtain useful data.
The development of templates has provided a tool to record baseline data on livestock populations and production. When the reports are compiled analysis of population trends is possible and spatial and temporal production parameters can be identified. The project has now collected data from each of the pilot sites and preliminary analysis is being undertaken by an Australian Development Scholarship (ADS) student as part of a Masters in Tropical Animal Science at James Cook University.
A second focus of this project is to identify the attitudes of livestock owners to disease and reporting of disease. A social survey was developed and livestock owners who use the reporting templates were interviewed during the second half of 2009. Knowledge and attitude variations for each site were clearly obvious. The analysis is still being completed but early trends indicate knowledge of causation of disease by livestock owners is low and similarly associations between reporting of disease with expectations of better human or livestock health management outcomes was poorly recognised.
There remains an obvious need to increase capacity of adequate livestock husbandry and disease management advice. The increasing trends towards a cash economy to fund improvements in living standards and school fees for many livestock owners is placing a greater dependence on livestock for income generation rather than providing food for family or village sustenance. In time the systems developed from the project research can be used to prioritise funding programs and review benefits of husbandry or disease control interventions. To aid this transition a student at Unitech is using data generated by syndromic reports to identify production deficits in poultry. It is also the intention of project collaborators to develop proactive use of the templates to deliver a rapid appraisal of livestock performance in under resourced areas to guide funding priorities in the future.
At present the tool and reporting is providing a flexible base for development of animal disease surveillance and response strategy that involves livestock owners in the ownership of production and disease programs. The need for additional technical capacity to improve the quality and quantity of data is also clearly identified.

Animal health resources are limiting the collection and recording of animal health status of subsistence farming and agricultural projects in PNG, this project researches the systems required to meet these challenges.
The primary aim of the project is to research the tools and drivers required to improve the capacity for PNG to detect and manage animal diseases of quarantine, trade and food security significance.
Papua New Guinea is currently experiencing a rapid improvement in the economic forecast for wealth through the exploration of mineral and energy reserves. There is a consequential need to ensure food security for the increased population and increasing trend away from subsistence agriculture toward a more cash based economy.
PNG joined the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) in 2009 and in common with many other Pacific nations identifies that biosecurity and food security are major challenges to their economic development and success in improving nutritional status of their population.
The project methodology involves completion of simple checklists by livestock owners and animal health auxiliary staff to facilitate the collection and reporting of signs (syndromes) of disease. Data is collated and analysed to detect variations in syndromes as an indicator of potential change in the endemic disease prevalence.
Four pilot sites are being monitored to evaluate the validity of data from various production systems, animal health support networks and incentives on the provision of weekly reports of animal health.
The project is now based within Australia at the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville. The principal PNG collaborator is the National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) as the primary animal health and quarantine agency in PNG. NAQIA staff are actively involved in collation and analysis of data as well as coordination of project reporters at Port Moresby, Goroka, Lae and Kokopo in East New Britain. Other collaborations are with the University of Goroka to undertake research into the social aspects of livestock ownership and health monitoring, UniTech in Lae for research on use of data to determine production information and the Lutheran Development Service for access to remote villages.
Preliminary examination of the data reveals a substantial decline of participation rates over eighteen months of operation. The study of livestock owner's attitudes to health and production of their animals reveals a very low level of understanding of the causation of animal or human disease with a resultant failure by livestock owners to link reporting of disease to improvement in health or production from their livestock.
A mid term review of the project developed objectives for an extended project to evaluate incentives for reporting to improve the participation rates and use of trained animal health officers to validate the data records.
Incentives in the form of direct animal health advice and treatments are a potential method to establish the link between husbandry and health and to improve syndromic reporting rates by project participants. Pigs at the Goroka site were treated with antiparasiticals and effects on weight and skin diseases are being monitored together with participation rates in the program. NAQIA staff at sites in Port Moresby, Lae and Kokopo assists reporters with the collection of information.
A Masters student at UniTech Lae has initiated work on use of reporting templates to assist in the effective production of village pigs in Morobe province. This work builds on the identification of social drivers as a factor in failure to report disease undertaken in earlier project work.
Further development of the technique will depend on the ability to validate the data included in reports. An experienced NAQIA epidemiologist has returned from JCU following successful completion of ADS funded Masters program and will continue to identify methods to improve the validity of data collection methods.
In the next year the project will begin to include data from Australian sites to research the differences in social attitudes and potential for use of the tool for identification of change in disease distribution or risk. This is timely as we have seen the apparent change in distribution of equine arboviruses over the recent wet season and the potential to use this system to detect at risk populations and disease expression through change in observed syndromes is considerable.
This research is delivering alternatives to high cost single point temporal surveillance in remote areas such as the Pacific Islands and northern Australia. Collaboration with other projects and partners currently working on the social drivers for reporting livestock health and the demographic and climatic factors influencing movement of animal diseases in the tropical region has the potential to deliver a low cost monitoring system for changes in disease distribution or prevalence.