Progress with enhancing veterinary surveillance in the United Kingdom

The uk has experienced various animal health events that have had national impact in recent years. In response, a ‘Veterinary Surveillance Strategy’ (vss) was published in 2003, with the objective of enhancing and coordinating national veterinary surveillance practice in a way that would enable important animal health events to be detected and assessed more rapidly and reliably. The vss adopts an integrated uk-wide approach, which includes widespread engagement with interested parties both within government and beyond. It proposes enhancing surveillance through improved collaboration; transparent and defensible prioritisation of government resources to surveillance; deriving better value from existing resources, and assuring quality of the surveillance reports and source data. This article describes progress with implementing the vss, in particular the methodology for developing a functional network and creating an effective, quality-assured, information management system, radar.