Towards One Health disease surveillance: The Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance approach

Abstract

Africa has the highest burden of infectious diseases in the world and yet the least capacity for its risk management. It has therefore become increasingly important to search for 'fit-for- purpose' approaches to infectious disease surveillance and thereby targeted disease control. The fact that the majority of human infectious diseases are originally of animal origin means we have to consider One Health (OH) approaches which require inter-sectoral collaboration for custom-made infectious disease surveillance in the endemic settings of Africa. A baseline survey was conducted to assess the current status and performance of human and animal health surveillance systems and subsequently a strategy towards OH surveillance system was developed. The strategy focused on assessing the combination of participatory epidemiological approaches and the deployment of mobile technologies to enhance the effectiveness of disease alerts and surveillance at the point of occurrence, which often lies in remote areas. We selected three study sites, namely the Ngorongoro, Kagera River basin and Zambezi River basin ecosystems. We have piloted and introduced the next-generation Android mobile phones running the EpiCollect application developed by Imperial College to aid geo-spatial and clinical data capture and transmission of this data from the field to the remote Information Technology (IT) servers at the research hubs for storage, analysis, feedback and reporting. We expect that the combination of participatory epidemiology and technology will significantly improve OH disease surveillance in southern Africa.

A Novel Electronic Data Collection System for Large-Scale Surveys of Neglected Tropical Diseases

“…Electronic data collection saved time, was less costly, was at least as accurate as standard paper-based questionnaires, and was preferred by experienced paper-based data recorders. These advantages were similar as those advertised in recent applications of Android-based data collection applied to animal health and surveillance of zoonotic diseases [40], [41]. Such systems could be readily applied to other large-scale neglected tropical disease control surveys as well as national initiatives, such as the malaria indicator surveys (MIS), the demographic and health surveys (DHS), the UNICEF multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS), or the regular household surveys done by the health demographic surveillance systems (HDSS) of the INDEPTH network [42]–[44].…”

Practice of One Health approaches: Bridges and barriers in Tanzania

“…Other examples include sharing facilities such as refrigerators for storage of vaccines for humans and for livestock, and vehicles to carry out campaigns against zoonotic diseases. There is some empirical information on such collaborations; Karimuribo et al (2012) found that sometimes animal and health officers in Ngorongoro District, Tanzania, were sharing vaccine storage facilities, especially during times of disease vaccination campaigns when teams of vaccinators were camping in remote rural areas. Although such collaborative activities are undertaken, upscaling the same and undertaking more others is impeded by various barriers.…”

Animal health constraints in dairy goats kept under smallholder farming systems in Kongwa and Mvomero Districts, Tanzania

“…Therefore, there is a need to develop sustainable disease control strategy for CCPP in order to promote commercial goat production. Apart from CCPP, a peste des petits ruminants (PPR) has emerged in recent years as the major threat to the small ruminant industry in the country (Karimuribo et al, , 2012. However, it was not encountered in this study.…”