three day International Workshop on “GIS Mapping & Data Analysis for Animal Health” concluded today at School of Public Health & Zoonoses, GADVASU. The workshop was organised in collaboration with The University of Sydney, Australia.
Dr Simrat Sagar Singh Dean PGS chaired the concluding function and congratulated the scientists on this occasion. He also distributed participation certificates to the participants after their successful completion of the workshop. Dr JPS Gill, GADVASU Coordinator Research cum Director School of Public Health and Zoonoses and organising secretary of this workshop thanked Prof. Michael Ward Chair Veterinary Public Health and Dr Navneet Dhand, Sub Dean Research Development in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, Australia for sparing their valuable time for facilitating this conference. He also thanked faculty and students of GADVASU for participation and showing keen interest in learning GIS Mapping & Data Analysis for Animal Health. Dr. AS Nanda, Vice-Chancellor GADVASU congratulated the scientists for this endeavour and hoped that it will result in productive research in analysing disease patterns and suggesting disease control strategies to dairy farmers. This the workshop will go a long way in developing capacity in India in tackling emerging infectious diseases. Dr BB Singh Dhaliwal coordinated this international workshop.
Dr. JPS Gill, organising secretary also thanked ArcGIS platform for providing trial access to the statistical software for teaching and learning to the participants during this workshop. In this workshop, the participants learned many important epidemiologic concepts such as disease mapping, geographic information system (GIS), skills for producing disease maps; identifying disease clusters or hotspots of the disease ; and provide guide for analysing survey data etc. Participants were given hands on trainings epidemiological software programs to plan experiment designs and analyses research data.
Dr Navneet Dhand informed that that these skills will enable GADVASU researchers to develop disease maps for livestock diseases in Punjab and empower them to investigate infectious disease outbreaks. They will now be able to predict how an outbreak is likely to spread and thus enable animal health authorities to take pre-emptive measures to prevent the spread of the disease. GADVASU researchers will also be able to identify why disease is highly clustered in one area and not present in other areas. They will be able to identify factors responsible for disease clustering, particularly the ones that could be manipulated by farmers or animal health authorities to prevent or control these diseases
Prof. Michael Ward and Dr. Dhand described it as a beginning of a long term relationship between the two premier institutions for developing new tools and techniques for improving animal and public health and underlined a need to organise collaborative events such as this international workshop in the future also. This international workshop was being organised as a part of a collaborative one health project implemented by GADVASU and University of Sydney, Australia.
Guru Angad Dev Veterinary & Animal Sciences University also signed “Memorandum of Understanding” with The University of Sydney, Australia 6 months ago for collaborative research and to facilitate exchange of faculty and students learnt about making disease maps
