Project Description - Acquaestrength

General objective

Aquaculture was growing all over the world and contributes significantly to human nutrition, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The spread of transboundary diseases is a significant threat to global aquatic animal production and for this reason the cooperation between countries, an effective management of the diseases and the prudent use of veterinary medicinal products (VMPs) are essential to obtain safe fish for the final consumer.
In accordance with the priorities set by the OIE Aquatic Animal Health Strategy, the project aims to provide technical assistance to promote:

capacity building, sharing of protocols for fish production and diseases surveillance and control;

sharing of professional know‐how;

to strengthen and facilitate the management of aquaculture production, to implement an advanced use of GIS techniques, to support surveillance and disease response, to enhance epidemiological surveillance, to limit the use of antimicrobials and VMP in finfish production and to improve diagnostic methods to support diseases detection and control for aquatic animal diseases.

Project Length

The project lasts 36 months starting from the contract signature.

Project activities

The project is divided in three work packages, each including a series of sub-tasks. Each work package is coordinated by a task leader in coordination with the other work package.

WP1	WP2	WP3
Geographic Information System (GIS) in surveillance and diseases response for aquatic animal disease	Responsible use of Veterinary Medicinal Products (VMPs)	Diagnostic methods
to enable knowledge and expertise exchange in the framework of the WOAH scientific network capacity building in the management of GIS project to support surveillance and disease response for aquatic animal disease	to develop specific guidelines for a safety approach, standard protocols for sampling and identification of bacterial pathogens, updated antimicrobial sensitivity tests (such as MIC) limiting the use of antibiotics and reducing AMR to enhance the Good Management Practices (GMP) of farmers by providing guidance on establishing biosecurity measures and tailor-made vaccination plans to strengthen the knowledge of Veterinary Services and aquaculture business operators in these fields through the organisation and development of specific courses (e.g. biosecurity and vaccination for farmers and aquatic animal health professional, good laboratory practice for technicians, autogenous vaccine production for small scale pharmaceutical companies)	to perform specific protocols (SOPs) for the identification of relevant viral and bacterial pathogens of freshwater and marine species to participate to proficiency testing for further implementing standardization of newly developed diagnostic laboratory protocols.