It has been shown that increased awareness and efficient wildlife health monitoring systems can assist in the detec­tion of EIDs (Morner et al. 2002; Belant and Deese 2010; World Organisation for Animal Health 2010).

For this reason, surveillance is central to Australia’s wildlife health arrangements (Woods and Bunn 2005). It is also important to remember that the majority of EIDs in the Australian context have arisen from within Australia rather than having been introduced and the majority of these have arisen in wildlife (e.g. ABLV and Hendra virus). WHA captures information on ‘Interesting or Unusual’ wildlife cases, a category of data designed to capture EID cases. Each year between 200 and 300 such cases are reported to eWHIS. Though the majority of these cases will not be significant, the reality is that these diseases are constantly emerging and re-emerging and vigilance is required.

4.1