ARCHIVE: Veterinary surveillance: Disease profiles

What are profiles?

A ‘profile’ is a set of information about an animal disease or condition. It concentrates on how we in the UK look for and control it. We put together information that is not available in one place anywhere else. This allows us to compare the dangers from different diseases. The main purpose of profiles is to provide this information for Government. It helps Government to make decisions about how to deal with different animal diseases or conditions. As the profiles are on the internet, everyone can see the basis on which decisions are made and can comment on it if they wish. Profiles will also be useful to anyone to whom animals and animal health are important. The main users of profiles are likely to be government policy makers, vets, animal owners, diagnostic laboratories, and any commercial industries with an interest in animal health and welfare.

Profiles are different from a textbook or encyclopaedia as the information is kept electronically in a database (the ‘Veterinary Surveillance profiles database’). This means that it is easy to select and read only the information you want. The information in profiles is checked by experts to make sure it is correct, and is kept up-to-date by external experts, vets, scientists and policy makers within Defra.

Profiles are written in more technical language than other disease descriptions on this website. Visit the A-Z Index of diseases if you want a short, simple description.

What types of profile are there?

There are four types of profile, the 'full profile', that are produced from the Veterinary Surveillance Profiles database.

Full profiles - Contain comprehensive information about a particular disease or condition in a ‘one-stop-shop’.

Summary Profiles and the Question and answer sheet for each disease or issue - Have been developed from the full profile to include a review of the key aspects of the disease .

Summary profile report –  Has been developed summarising information on the disease or issue being profiled by each reason for government intervention (RFI) e.g. human health, and also presents the score by criteria that it has been assigned.

What sort of information do detailed profiles contain?

Profiles give detailed, fairly technical information about each disease or condition. The information is held in sections which describe the disease or condition (what it looks like, what sort of animals it affects, which countries have it, how it can be diagnosed etc), whether and how it can affect people, what UK laws there are about it, how we look for it and control it, and what reports there are about it.

Please note the disease profiles below are currently being updated.

African Swine Fever, Avian Influenza, Bluetongue, Bovine Brucellosis, Bovine tuberculosis, campylobacter, Caseous lymphadenitis, Classical Swine Fever, Contagious Caprine Pleuropneumonia, E. coli 0157, Foot and Mouth disease, Hepatitis E, Johne’s disease, Louping-ill, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Newcastle Disease, rabies, salmonella, toxoplasmosis, trichinella and west nile fever.

All of these profiles also have a summary profile. A number of additional summary profiles have been drafted in support of the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy.

How are profiles created?

Each section of the profile is written by someone who knows the subject, usually an external expert. This information is then reviewed and kept up to date by a vet or scientist who works with the disease. Civil servants who look after the policy for the disease or condition will help write the parts that describe the law or government policy for that disease. Each disease profile is updated at an appropriate frequency to ensure it is kept up to date.

Further information


Page last modified: 19 May 2009
Page last reviewed: 8 September, 2009

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