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Training animal disease detectives
in the Asia-Pacific

Training animal disease detectives in the Asia-Pacific

The APCOVE Training Package is
now available in six languages

The APCOVE Training Package is
now available in six languages.

  • What is APCOVE?

APCOVE is a consortium of more than 40 veterinary epidemiologists, established to strengthen field veterinary epidemiology capacity in the Asia Pacific region.

APCOVE works with government animal health authorities and educators in the Asia-Pacific region. We help train animal disease detectives to detect, prevent and control animal disease outbreaks that may impact human health, animal health and farmer livelihoods.

APCOVE is led by the University of Sydney and includes veterinary epidemiologists from all veterinary schools of Australia and New Zealand, one veterinary school from the US and schools from eight countries in the Asia Pacific.

  • Animal disease detectives

APCOVE helps to train animal disease detectives to protect both animal and human health.

Surveillance

Animal disease detectives conduct animal disease surveillance so that diseases are detected early on before they get a chance to spread.

Outbreak investigation

Animal disease detectives investigate outbreaks to identify the source of each outbreak and to contain its spread.

One Health

APCOVE is passionate about One Health.

We believe that the health of animals, humans and the environment is interlinked. Therefore, we aim to eliminate siloed approaches to dealing with health issues at the human-animal-environment interface 

One Health recognises interconnections between humans, animals and the shared environment, and focusses on dealing with health issues holistically through collaboration. 

We work with animal and public health organisations in the Asia Pacific region to develop the knowledge and skills of veterinarians in One Health. This will better enable them to work with diverse teams involving people from public health and wildlife health, to improve communication and policy for disease investigation and surveillance.

75%
of the emerging infectious diseases originate from animals.
Population growth, urbanisation and deforestation are contributing to human encroachment on wild habitats, bringing humans and domestic animals into closer contact with wildlife. This increases the potential for pathogens to cross species barriers, resulting in their spillover from animals to humans.

Featured news

Animal disease detective’ training launched at World Health Summit

October 28, 2023
The University of Sydney’s Asia Pacific Consortium of Veterinary Epidemiology (APCOVE) has unveiled a comprehensive field training program at the World Health Summit in Berlin. This initiative aims to equip veterinary professionals and animal handlers to identify and prevent infectious diseases in the field before they escalate into global pandemics. The training package, presented during […]

Country partner profiles

working in the lab

Meet Dr Vu Thi Thu Tra

April 30, 2022
“In Vietnam and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases have occurred, causing huge social-economic impacts. Thus, we need a skilled and professional animal health workforce to rapidly and effectively respond to disease outbreaks.”

Meet Dr Imas Yuyun

April 21, 2021
“I am passionate about providing animal health services to help produce healthy animals and safe food.”