Agriculture Ministry turns to digital technology to track animal diseases

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries is turn­ing to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove the de­tec­tion, re­port­ing and re­sponse to an­i­mal dis­eases across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ini­tia­tive in­volves the roll­out of EMA-i+, a smart­phone ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­oped by the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) that al­lows field per­son­nel to re­port an­i­mal dis­ease events in re­al time and at­tach ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion to those re­ports.

The sys­tem is be­ing con­fig­ured and es­tab­lished in Trinidad and To­ba­go through the FAO’s Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion Pro­gramme.

The in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed through the ap­pli­ca­tion will be trans­mit­ted to the EM­PRES-i+ na­tion­al plat­form, where it will be se­cure­ly stored and made avail­able to au­tho­rised gov­ern­ment per­son­nel for mon­i­tor­ing, vi­su­al­i­sa­tion and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal analy­sis.

The tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing in­tro­duced as the Min­istry seeks to strength­en the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy an­i­mal health threats ear­ly and re­spond more quick­ly.

Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram said pre­pared­ness must be es­tab­lished be­fore a cri­sis emerges.

“Pre­pared­ness is some­thing that must be built be­fore a cri­sis oc­curs,” Rati­ram said.

“We can­not al­ways pre­vent an an­i­mal dis­ease from emerg­ing or en­ter­ing our coun­try, but we can strength­en our abil­i­ty to de­tect po­ten­tial threats, un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing and re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.”

The min­is­ter was speak­ing on Tues­day at the open­ing of a four-day EMA-i+ Train­ing of Train­ers Work­shop, be­ing held from Sep­tem­ber 8 to 11.

About 30 per­son­nel in­volved in an­i­mal dis­ease sur­veil­lance, da­ta col­lec­tion and re­port­ing are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the train­ing. This in­cludes 28 Min­istry of­fi­cers and two vet­eri­nary ser­vices of­fi­cers from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

The par­tic­i­pants will be trained to use EMA-i+ and will then train oth­er ex­pect­ed users across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry Michelle Anne Thomas said the ini­tia­tive was about more than in­tro­duc­ing a new ap­pli­ca­tion.

“The ob­jec­tive, there­fore, is not sim­ply to col­lect more in­for­ma­tion. It is to en­sure that the right in­for­ma­tion reach­es the right peo­ple at the right time, in a form that sup­ports time­ly and ev­i­dence-based ac­tion,” she said.

FAO Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (Ad In­ter­im) for Trinidad and To­ba­go and Suri­name, Dr Gillian Smith, said the sys­tem could strength­en the con­nec­tion be­tween in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed in the field and gov­ern­ment de­ci­sion-mak­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing an­i­mal health emer­gen­cies.

“By lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, the Min­istry can en­hance its reach and ef­fec­tive­ness, sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ing its ca­pac­i­ty be­yond cur­rent ap­proach­es,” Smith said.

The Min­istry said the ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to sup­port ear­li­er dis­ease de­tec­tion, faster re­sponse and bet­ter-in­formed de­ci­sions as it strength­ens na­tion­al an­i­mal health sur­veil­lance sys­tems.