Prioritization of Zoonotic Diseases in Kenya, 2015

Abstract

IntroductionZoonotic diseases have varying public health burden and socio-economic impact across time and geographical settings making their prioritization for prevention and control important at the national level. We conducted systematic prioritization of zoonotic diseases and developed a ranked list of these diseases that would guide allocation of resources to enhance their surveillance, prevention, and control.MethodsA group of 36 medical, veterinary, and wildlife experts in zoonoses from government, research institutions and universities in Kenya prioritized 36 diseases using a semi-quantitative One Health Zoonotic Disease Prioritization tool developed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with slight adaptations. The tool comprises five steps: listing of zoonotic diseases to be prioritized, development of ranking criteria, weighting criteria by pairwise comparison through analytical hierarchical process, scoring each zoonotic disease based on the criteria, and aggregation of scores.ResultsIn order of importance, the participants identified severity of illness in humans, epidemic/pandemic potential in humans, socio-economic burden, prevalence/incidence and availability of interventions (weighted scores assigned to each criteria were 0.23, 0.22, 0.21, 0.17 and 0.17 respectively), as the criteria to define the relative importance of the diseases. The top five priority diseases in descending order of ranking were anthrax, trypanosomiasis, rabies, brucellosis and Rift Valley fever.ConclusionAlthough less prominently mentioned, neglected zoonotic diseases ranked highly compared to those with epidemic potential suggesting these endemic diseases cause substantial public health burden. The list of priority zoonotic disease is crucial for the targeted allocation of resources and informing disease prevention and control programs for zoonoses in Kenya.

Zoonotic disease research in East Africa

“…Although much of the current global focus on zoonoses is mainly directed to emerging and re-emerging [13,19].…”

“…We used a list of 36 zoonotic diseases suspected or known to be present in the East Africa region identified by a team of public health and veterinary experts in zoonoses in Kenya (see Table 3 in the referenced article) [13]. Using PubMed, Google scholar and African Journal of Science, we searched for published articles on these zoonotic diseases in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia for the period between 1920 and 2017.…”

Prioritizing Zoonoses for Global Health Capacity Building—Themes from One Health Zoonotic Disease Workshops in 7 Countries, 2014–2016

“…During 2014-2016, at countries' request, CDC conducted OHZDP workshops in Thailand, Kenya (27), Ethiopia (28), Azerbaijan, Cameroon, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All countries prioritized diseases on a national level; 4 (57.1%) workshops were specifically conducted to advance GHSA implementation in the country, but all countries had a goal to strengthen multisectoral collaboration and focus laboratory, surveillance, and prevention efforts.…”

“…Two countries (Kenya and Thailand) diverged from the standard methods by including more than the recommended number of voting members. Kenya placed voting members into 5 groups, then used group discussion and consensus to assign weights to the individual criteria (27). Thailand held 2 separate, concurrent workshops that produced 2 different outcomes; these outcomes were then combined at a separate meeting held 1 month later to develop a final list of criteria by discussion and consensus.…”

Building laboratory capacity to detect and characterize pathogens of public and global health security concern in Kenya

“…DLSP has also evaluated serologic evidence of human exposure to Bacillus anthracis, Brucella spp., spotted fever group rickettsioses, and typhus group rickettsioses from persons aged 15-64 years and determined a high seropositivity suggesting frequent exposure to these pathogens in the Kenyan population. These studies allowed a recent prioritization of zoonotic diseases of public health importance in Kenya [19,20].…”