The devastating outbreak of the virus among pigs in Eastern Europe and three countries in the EU are the reason that today the research is aimed at preventing further spread of the disease, reports from Warsaw employee environmental Fund "Green Front" Alexey Kovtun.

ASF is vysokozaraznoe viral disease in which the mortality of domestic pigs is 100 percent. Infection occurs either through direct contact with infected animals or through ticks that may transmit the disease from infected wild boars.

Although ASF is mainly acts in subtropical Africa, in recent years the disease has spread to Eastern Europe, and today documented cases of infection in the three countries of the European Union. To minimize the impact of the virus on other countries in the region, in the framework of the EU funded project "Targeted research effort on African swine fever" (ASFORCE) are working on strategies to prevent disease and combat.

The project ASFORCE will give veterinarians, breeders, hunters and officials with information that will assist in the supervision and control; provide data that will identify risk factors and develop a strategy for vaccine development.

Scientists will try to understand the patterns, causes and consequences of the disease, modeling the dynamics of the spread of the virus in the natural habitat of wild boars. They intend to develop means of control and Biosafety, watching the contacts wild boars to domestic pigs, as well as examining the role of ticks in the spread of the disease.

The main factor hampering the fight against the disease, is the absence of an effective vaccine that could protect pigs. Scientists plan to use the weakened strains of the virus, to reproduce the body's reaction to disease, and to identify proteins that are derived from a virus which attacks the immune system of the pig.

In order to prevent costly outbreaks of disease, the group ASFORCE consulting stakeholders, such as breeders, hunters and veterinarians on various issues of the disease.