Prioritization of livestock transboundary diseases in Belgium using a multi-criteria decision analysis tool based on drivers of emergence.

During the past decade, livestock diseases have (re-)emerged in areas where they had been previously eradicated or never been recorded before. Drivers (i.e. factors of (re-)emergence) have been identified. Livestock diseases spread irrespective of borders, and therefore, reliable methods are required to help decisions makers to identify potential threats and try stopping their (re-)emergence. Ranking methods and multi-criteria approaches are cost-effective tools for such purpose and were applied to prioritize a list of selected diseases (N=29 including 6 zoonoses) based on the opinion of 62 experts in accordance with 50 drivers-related criteria. Diseases appearing in the upper ranking were porcine epidemic diarrhoea, foot-and-mouth disease, low pathogenic avian influenza, African horse sickness, and highly pathogenic avian influenza. The tool proposed uses a multi-criteria decision analysis approach to prioritize pathogens according to drivers and can be applied to other countries or diseases.