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anses

French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety

Nancy Laboratory for Rabies and Wildlife

Address : CS 40009 54220 Malzéville

Phone : +33 (0)3 83 29 89 50

Manager : Elodie Monchâtre-Leroy

Through multiple collaborations within national epidemiological surveillance networks and field studies, the laboratory contributes to national knowledge of the health status of wildlife. As wildlife may act as reservoirs of zoonoses or diseases that are transmissible to domestic animals, monitoring their health status is both a public health and an economic issue. The laboratory has a staff of 43, two research units and an experimental station.

 The Laboratory plays a part in national surveillance of the health status of wildlife:

  • it studies pathogenic agents (viruses and parasites);
  • it monitors the emergence and/or spread of diseases, analyses their causes and assesses the health risks of some of them; it thus participates in gathering and interpreting data for monitoring the health of wild animals.

Much of its technical activities are performed in a Level 3 containment area that includes the L3 laboratories and A3 animal housing areas. The laboratory’s areas of specialisation are:

  • animal rabies, with a current focus on rabies in bats;
  • certain wildlife zoonoses, in particular alveolar echinococcosis, but also Lyme disease, tick-borne encephalitis and hantaviruses.

 

Its reference mandates are:

  • National Reference Laboratory for echinococcosis and rabies;
  • Reference Laboratory for rabies for both the European Union and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE); (visit the website)
  • World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre on Research and Management on Zoonoses Control.