News from New Zealand - February 2023

Our VetSalus NZ Project Manager and veterinarian Warren Webber attended the One Health Aotearoa Symposium in Wellington NZ, 6th & 7th December 2022. For those who may wonder, Aotearoa is the Māori indigenous word for New Zealand, the most popular translation being "land of the long white cloud". This refers to the cloud formations which helped early Polynesian navigators find the country.

One Health Aotearoa Symposium 2022 - One Health Aotearoa

One Health Aotearoa (OHA) is an integrative approach to understanding, preventing, and controlling infectious disease. OHA is also an alliance of New Zealand’s leading infectious diseases researchers committed to working together to address important health hazards in New Zealand, and beyond, and is dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders by providing new approaches to the management, prevention and control of infectious diseases. The OHA mission is to break down traditional silos and bring together the best scientists from diverse disciplines, including non-traditional fields. They aspire to be the national leader in infectious diseases research, education and advocacy, and the primary point of contact in New Zealand for international engagement and collaboration in ‘One Health’.

One Health Aotearoa was initiated in 2013 around a unique three-way alliance between the University of Otago’s medical school, Massey University’s veterinary school and the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), which is the national reference laboratory and surveillance provider for infectious diseases. In 2017, the One Health Aotearoa alliance was awarded flagship research centre status with funding from the University of Otago. This has allowed extension of the network of scientists, formation of new research partnerships and work with government departments and policy makers through annual symposiums and workshops.

Themes of the 8th OHA Symposium

• Infectious disease eradication

• Emerging infectious diseases & health inequality

• Antimicrobial resistance

• Environmental and water health

• Mātauranga Māori / mahinga kai

• Endemic zoonotic diseases

• Biosecurity prevention and preparedness

• Other One Health topics

The complete upload of presentations from the 8th Symposium is still pending but the OHA website One Health Aotearoa Symposium 2022 - One Health Aotearoa has an archive of six previous symposia. Watch this space and keep an eye on the OHA website for further uploads.

Presentations from the latest event which piqued the interest of our Man Downunder included the following:

• Plenary: Alison Mather, Quadram Institute (UK) Global epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance: Where and for what should we be looking?

• Plenary: David Aanensen, University of Oxford Enhancing AMR surveillance with integrated genomic data

• Sophie van Hamelsveld, ESR Bacterial response to antibiotics altered by emerging organic contaminants, implications for environmental transmission of antibiotic resistance

• Emma Voss, University of Otago New Zealand wide survey of Staphylococcus aureus strains in dairy cows shows conserved multidrug resistance and dominance of endemic ST1 strain type

• Jens Hammerl, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment Emergence of multidrug-resistant Vibrio parahaemolyticus in imported seafood in Germany: Genetic basis and transmissibility of resistance plasmids

• Sandra Steele, University of Melbourne Operationalisation of One Health: preparedness and response to EIDs and zoonoses in Australia

• Jackie Benschop, Massey University Novel profiles and risk factors for leptospirosis in Aotearoa

• Patrick Biggs, Massey University The genomics of the New Zealand Mycoplasma bovis outbreak

• Amy Burroughs, Ministry for Primary Industries Are we there yet? Determining the evidence required to demonstrate Mycoplasma bovis eradication from Aotearoa

• Scott McDougall, Cognosco, Anexa Veterinary Services Detection of MRSA of likely human origin in a dairy herd

• Stefan Hertwig, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment Yersinia infections in Europe: What is known thus far and problems we face

• Arindam Basu, University of Canterbury Connecting the dots: how to build One Health surveillance integrating human, animal, food, genomics, and telemedicine for planetary scale pandemic preparedness

• William Halliday, Beef + Lamb NZ Protecting your patch – practical biosecurity for livestock farmers