Jane Gibbens
Jane Gibbens, APHA, Defra (Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs)
Jane teaches various aspects of surveillance and disease control during the course. She is the Head of the Epidemiology and Risk Group in APHA, providing technical advice to Defra to inform policy development, and within APHA. Her responsibilities include leading the National Emergency Epidemiology Group during exotic disease outbreaks; Chair of the Veterinary Risk Group that advises the UK CVOs on unexpected threats, epidemiological advice on surveillance design and disease preparedness; and provision of epidemiology consultancy to Defra.
Jane qualified as a veterinarian from the RVC in 1981 and then spent two years in mixed practice. She gained an MSc in Tropical Veterinary Science in 1984, and then worked in British Aid projects in Belize and Yemen. She joined the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1991, as a Vet Investigation Officer at Winchester VI Centre.
In 1995 Jane gained an MSc in Epidemiology (with distinction) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She continued to work at VLA Weybridge, developing the approach to surveillance, redesigning the data capture system (FarmFile) for laboratory scanning surveillance data, and several zoonoses projects. At the end of 1999 she moved to core Defra to work in the Exotic Diseases Team, dealing with notifications of suspect statutory exotic disease and managing associated projects, participation in the development of a veterinary surveillance strategy, and worked as member or leader of the national epidemiology teams created for the control of Classical Swine Fever in 2000, Foot and Mouth disease in 2001 and 2007, Bluetongue in 2007 and several outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Equine Infectious Anaemia in the last 10 years.