Kristīne Lamberga of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies has defended a doctoral thesis proposing a structured outbreak investigation and early detection framework for African swine fever on domestic pig farms. She was supervised by Professors Aivars Bērziņš of Latvia and Arvo Viltrop of the Estonian University of Life Sciences.
The work examined the most likely routes by which the virus enters farms using a hypothesis-based epidemiological method that also draws on information from non-experts, and improved sampling strategies for tracking its spread. It also evaluated rapid on-site tests, comparing them with laboratory methods.
She identified the key parameters needed to reconstruct the high-risk period of an outbreak and assessed how effective Latvia’s surveillance is at early detection. The result is a set of tools to detect outbreaks earlier and investigate them systematically, which could help curb a disease that causes heavy losses for farmers.
