Animal Health Research Institute (AHRI) is the back-up institute of County Animal and Livestock Disease Control Centers and animal inspection stations in Taiwan and plays a key role in the prevention of emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases. To establish AHRI as a national diagnostic center in accordance with international standard, we have built the negative-pressured necropsy facility in 2004, and we practice the diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and rabies with standard operation procedures. To learn techniques and standard operation procedures of emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases that are zoonosis, we would send our staffs to the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for short term training in 2005. This training is essential for the staffs that are in charge of animal necropsy laboratory, BSL-3 laboratory, routine diagnosis of infectious diseases as well as rapid processing of large amounts of cases. This training is also helpful in preventing the invasion of infectious diseases, which are not found in our country. In addition, we wish to learn immunohistochemistry techniques for the diagnosis of West Nile virus encephalitis, leptospirosis, and rabies. In summary, the outcome of this training will improve our staffs in disease diagnosis, educate other research staff in AHRI, and technically support the County Animal and Livestock Disease Control Centers and animal inspection stations in Taiwan.
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