The importance of immediate destruction in epidemics of foot and mouth disease

Foot and mouth disease is still prevalent in many parts of the world, as em phasised by the recent devastating epidemic in pig farms in Taiwan. A discr ete time mechanistic model has been used to describe the spread of infectio n in both this epidemic and the 1967 to 1968 epidemic in the UK. The force of infection and basic reproduction number are estimated and the sensitivit y of these results to the distributions of both the latent and infectious p eriods of the disease is examined. Epidemic simulations were performed to e valuate the disease control policy whereby all herds are slaughtered on the same day as disease confirmation. These simulations showed that implementi ng this policy could have resulted in a dramatic reduction (of over 60 per cent) in the number of pig farms affected in the Taiwan epidemic. It is thu s imperative that the necessary resources are available to implement this p olicy, should an outbreak occur. (C) 2000 Harcourt publishers Ltd.