Grants awarded

For definitions of the country setting

For the UK, the veterinary caseload will be evaluated from pre-existing datasets by Dr. David Brodbelt at the Royal Veterinary College (for small animals), Mr. Jonathan Reader at Synergy Farm Health Ltd. (for livestock) and Mr. Marco Duz at the University of Glasgow (equine).  The dataset from Mr Duz also includes over 350,000 horses in the USA which will provide an idea of the average equine caseload in a high-income country other than the UK.

Unexpectedly, applications focusing on emergency consultations were also received. Although not originally in our proposal, these were considered because they cover an important population of relevance for our EBVM Network members and for the practicing vet in general. Dr. Ava Firth and her team at Vets Now will interrogate a database with records from more than 125,000 out-of-hours UK small animal patients to find out the most (and least) frequent veterinary emergency problems.

Outside the UK, datasets that could be analysed retrospectively were harder to obtain due to inconsistencies in the recording of clinical data (which is accepted to be a worldwide challenge in veterinary medicine). Concessions were made when appropriate by considering projects looking at collecting data prospectively, provided that grant holders accounted for seasonal fluctuations.

The projects selected will use different methodologies for data collection. Professor Lothar Kreienbrock from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Veterinary Public Health at Hanover University will extract data on small animal, equine and livestock population in Germany. He will do this by recruiting veterinary students on their ‘practical year’ who will record consultations on a standardised questionnaire. A similar methodology will be used to analyse the small animal caseload of a low income region of Peru by Mr. Richard Lerner from PAZ (Pan American Zoonotic Research and Prevention).

Finally, research teams in two charities were also selected. The Worldwide Veterinary Service, led by Ms Laura Craighead, will collect data from its network of registered partners in low-income countries, and Dr. Andrew Stringer from SPANA will distribute tablets with a pre-installed epidemiological app to record equine consultations in three low-income countries: Mali, Morocco and Ethiopia.

 An EBVM Network Grants round is expected to open later in 2014, under a “creating baselines” agenda. Information about these grants will be posted in the “Available Grants” section at a later date.