HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

Emerging diseases – Ready and waiting?

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 19 October 2004

Mixed breakout groups

Dr Jim Peacock
President, Australian Academy of Science

We are going to regroup in some mixed groups. This is very important, again. Some excellent material has come up in these discussions, and you would have noted that there were some universalities or common points brought up from each of them. I think that really picks up the last point of discussion, about multidisciplinary teams in different areas.

Everyone talked about the assessment of risk. We don't seem to be particularly strong at that or to have very good mechanisms in place for it.

The question of investment came up. Everyone saw that more investment was needed in responding to emerging diseases. Who is going to make it? Where is the money going to come from? How would you go about persuading, if it is to be government or industry bodies or both? It is probably not private companies, but maybe there are ways of bringing private companies in as well.

And then there is the matter of capacity in the different disciplines that are important in each of the areas we have discussed. Clearly we recognise that in some disciplines, or parts of some disciplines, we have some excellent capacity. But I heard one of the groups talking about the very small number of field plant pathologists left in Australia – this being, I think, an order of magnitude less than the veterinary people in the field. So there are some obvious problems.

I remain surprised that you have not talked very much about new science, and whether there are some developments in science that you think could change the status quo. Are there developments in our science that we should be using as one of the arguments, or levers, to obtain more investment in research? I think there was one suggestion of ‘Have microarray, will travel into the field' and so on, but there must be other things that have changed quite dramatically in the last, say, two decades that might enable us to make a more telling argument to our investment masters.

The question of ‘beyond the coastline of Australia' came up I think in every group. Surely one of the major strategies that should be considered is working beyond the coastline, in partnership with other countries that may be sources of disease. There may be other groups that have particular scientific expertise that we should be working with. We need to recognise that sometimes the Australian supporting-research dollar isn't necessarily best spent in Australia.

Although we have heard some assurance that the different states are working a little better together than they used to, we still don't have uniform regulations and often I think the knowledge communication between those different bodies is not good. We don't have national databases in many cases. Are we on the way to putting those in place? Can we do better?

I think every group recognised the need for more education of a wide range of stakeholders – of the general public, of people involved in the particular industries, people involved in trading, not only in production – and the need to recognise that our awareness and surveillance have to go right along every part of that business chain.

And then there is the question of communication within science itself and between scientists and other parts of industry and community, and of course to the politicians.

Finally, there is the inevitable realisation now that even with some human diseases we can't just think of humans as a source material. Other animals clearly are being involved in the generation of some of our new viral diseases and perhaps other diseases. A multidisciplinary response team or communication team for these various threats is certainly much needed.

These are just some of the universalities that have been identified in responding to emerging diseases in the areas of human, animal, plant and aquatic health. [Request is then made for a structured series of prioritised recommendations from mixed breakout groups.]