Disease alerts and forecasting of zoonotic diseases: an overview

Abstract

Epidemiologists are adopting new techniques by the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) to study a variety of animal and zoonotic diseases. Associations between satellite-derived environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, land cover type and vector density is used for disease prediction. Early warning systems rapidly detect the introduction or sudden increase in incidence of any disease of livestock which has the potential to develop into epidemic proportions and/or cause serious socioeconomic consequences or public health concerns. Early warning activities, mainly based on disease surveillance, reporting, and epidemiological analysis, are supported by information systems that enable integration, analysis and sharing of animal health data combined with relevant layers of information such as socioeconomic, production and climatic data. The convergence of factors such as the availability of multi-temporal satellite data and georeferenced epidemiological data, collaboration between scientists, biologists and the availability of sophisticated, statistical GIS creates a fertile research environment. In this paper, we review the Global Early Warning System (GLEWS) that formally brings together human and veterinary public health systems and application of environmental data for study of diseases like avian influenza and Rift valley fever which offers the capability to demonstrate vector-environment relationships and potentially forecast the risk of disease outbreaks or epidemics. An emphasis is also given on components of early warning system and its use for forecasting of animal and zoonotic diseases in India.

Using sero-positivity to assess geospatial burden of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia on pastoral cattle herds of north-central Nigeria

“…Veterinary epidemiologists are adopting these new techniques to study a variety of animal and zoonotic diseases (Kshirsagar et al 2013). These quite uncommonly utilized techniques are not known to have been previously applied in the area of CBPP epidemiology in Nigeria.…”

One Health in South Asia and its challenges in implementation from stakeholder perspective

“…Cross boarder issues in transferring diseases is prevalent in India. India has developed its own ADMAS‐Epitrak software using database, GIS and statistical tools for recording, reporting and analysis of transboundary animal and infectious zoonotic diseases such as Avian Influenza (AI) (FAO 2001) 24 . Recently, India has also launched a GIS mapping system called Animal Disease Referral Expert System (NADRES), the first of its kind in South Asia, for the surveillance of infectious zoonotic diseases such as anthrax and HPAI (SAARC/FAO 2011) 25 .…”

Geo-spatial distribution of <i>Brucella melitensis</i> infection in selected local government areas of Katsina and Sokoto States, Nigeria

“…Musa et al (2013) also reported that the most important application of GIS in the field is in the identification of disease clusters. Despite the fact that the technique has been adopted in the study of various zoonoses in the world (Kshirsagar et al, 2013), its application is still in its infancy stage in Nigeria, especially in the northern part of the country (Alhaji et al, 2016). Amongst the few work done using this technique in Nigeria is the mapping out the burden of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) carried out by Alhaji et al (2016) in north-central Nigeria.…”