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6th Annual Meeting, United Kingdom 2012

The theme of the 6th Annual Meeting reflects the ever changing virus landscape. This poses continuing and new threats to animal and human health and food security and provides challenges for control of animal diseases.

The meeting was foccused on the latest developments aimed at monitoring and understanding the evolution, emergence, transmission and spread of epizootic viruses. Focus was on EPIZONE themes aimed at improved disease control through integration and collaboration of research in diagnostics, intervention strategies, risk assessment, surveillance and epidemiology.

Special topics

-  "African swine fever and other emerging virus diseases".
African swine fever (ASF) is a devastating, highly fatal disease of pigs which has severe socio-economic consequences in affected countries. The recent spread of ASF to the Trans Caucasus region and Russian Federation emphasises the risks for further global spread and the threat posed to global food security. And because of the theme of this meeting "Viruses on the move"

- "Application of next generation sequencing technologies to virus research".
New developments in sequencing technologies offer enormous potential for virus discovery and diagnosis as well as opportunities for understanding virus, host interactions. This session will review the latest technologies and their applications to virology.