Infectious disease control sits at the intersection of clinical decision-making, population health, biosecurity, and ethics. Whether keeping hospitalised patients safe, managing a single sick animal, designing a herd-level prevention programme, or interpreting disease data in a research or policy context, the core challenge is the same: reducing the probability that pathogens are introduced, transmitted, and maintained within animal populations, while safeguarding animal welfare, human health, and system sustainability.
This e-book provides a practical, concept-driven guide to infectious disease control across veterinary and animal-health settings. It focuses on understanding how diseases spread, where control points sit within biological and management systems, and how different tools can be combined into coherent, evidence-based strategies. Rather than presenting disease-specific recipes, the emphasis is on transferable principles that apply across species, production systems, and clinical contexts.
This module introduces the foundational concepts that underpin all infectious disease control decisions. Rather than focusing on specific pathogens, it builds an understanding of how infections emerge, spread, and persist within animal populations, and where meaningful opportunities for control exist.
Effective infectious disease control depends on accurately determining disease status at both individual and population levels. This module focuses on how diagnostic testing and surveillance systems generate information, and how that information should be interpreted and used in practice.
Veterinary hospitals and clinics present unique risks for pathogen transmission due to high animal turnover, close contact, and the presence of vulnerable patients. This chapter applies infection control principles to the clinical environment.
When infectious disease occurs at the herd or group level, control requires rapid, coordinated action informed by epidemiological reasoning. This module addresses how to investigate, manage, and contain outbreaks within production and group-housed systems
Some infectious diseases require coordinated responses beyond individual farms or clinics. This module scales infection control principles up to the regional and national level, focusing on preparedness, response, and recovery.
This module introduces a structured approach to estimating the economic and social impacts of priority infectious diseases in livestock systems. It outlines the key types of information needed to understand disease burden and explains how this evidence supports disease prioritisation and decision-making when resources for infectious disease control are limited.
Advancing Animal Care through Shared Learning