Online surveillance of media health event reporting in Nepal: digital disease detection from a One Health perspective

Schwind, Jessica S; Norman, Stephanie A.; Karmacharya, Dibesh; Wolking, David; Dixit, Sameer; Rajbhandari, Rajesh Man; Mekaru, Sumiko R.; Brownstein, John S.

doi:10.1186/s12914-017-0134-2

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Our study showed that the official sources were more likely to report events related to livestock compared to humans. This finding is in agreement with a previous study carried out in Nepal where international sources, especially OIE, were more likely to report animal health events compared to human events [ 26 ]. OIE member countries have requirements for reporting unusual events related to notifiable diseases [ 27 ].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Digital Biosurveillance for Zoonotic Disease Detection in Kenya

2021

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Infectious disease surveillance is crucial for early detection and situational awareness of disease outbreaks. Digital biosurveillance monitors large volumes of open-source data to flag potential health threats. This study investigates the potential of digital surveillance in the detection of the top five priority zoonotic diseases in Kenya: Rift Valley fever (RVF), anthrax, rabies, brucellosis, and trypanosomiasis. Open-source disease events reported between August 2016 and October 2020 were collected and key event-specific information was extracted using a newly developed disease event taxonomy. A total of 424 disease reports encompassing 55 unique events belonging to anthrax (43.6%), RVF (34.6%), and rabies (21.8%) were identified. Most events were first reported by news media (78.2%) followed by international health organizations (16.4%). News media reported the events 4.1 (±4.7) days faster than the official reports. There was a positive association between official reporting and RVF events (odds ratio (OR) 195.5, 95% confidence interval (CI); 24.01–4756.43, p < 0.001) and a negative association between official reporting and local media coverage of events (OR 0.03, 95% CI; 0.00–0.17, p = 0.030). This study highlights the usefulness of local news in the detection of potentially neglected zoonotic disease events and the importance of digital biosurveillance in resource-limited settings.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Digital Biosurveillance for Zoonotic Disease Detection in Kenya

2021

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“…In this study, journalists reported on public health topics most frequently, followed by animal health and environmental health, respectively. Our findings were also in line with previous research that revealed a priority on human health event reporting and an underreporting of animal and environmental health events from a global digital epidemiology standpoint in Nepal [34].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…While the significance of health communication and communication technologies in public health is well recognized, it is underutilized in veterinary and environmental health sciences [ 32 , 33 ]. A recent study of One Health reporting in Nepal revealed few animal and environmental health media reports were captured by an online, global electronic information system, demonstrating either a low sensitivity for health reports from these sectors or an underreporting of these topics from the Nepali media [ 34 ]. Animal and environmental health, however, are directly linked to human health; therefore, the depiction of these in the media is highly relevant to readers and subsequent public knowledge, especially for those in low-resource settings who may not have access to other sources of information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health Reporting Characteristics among Journalists in Nepal Utilizing a One Health Framework

Schwind

Norman

Rahman

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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Journalists play a crucial role in the dissemination of health-related information. In developing countries, such as Nepal, the media are integral in shaping the national agenda and informing the public of important health issues. With an increasing need for a collaborative effort to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment, the One Health approach was used to characterize health reporting in Nepal. A comprehensive survey was administered to health journalists regarding their public, animal, and environmental health reporting habits. Seventy-one journalists completed the survey across three study sites. Many journalists indicated a history of reporting across all three sectors but did not routinely focus on health reporting in general. The majority of journalists perceived the quality and overall coverage of health-related topics increased over the last five years. However, few journalists reported receiving specialized training in any health sector. Although the overall quality of health reporting in the Nepali media showed improvements, many journalists acknowledged a lack of understanding of common health topics and a desire to learn more skills related to accurate health reporting. One Health provides a conceptual framework for understanding and promoting health communication through mass media to benefit humans, animals, and ecosystems.

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“…Extensive work has examined the value of Internet-based sources such as social media, search engines and news contents for conducting infectious disease surveillance 9–11 . Some studies have focused on confined geographical locations, such as Latin America 12 , the Netherlands 13 and Nepal 14 , while others have analyzed disease outbreaks globally 15,16 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Assessment of Twitter’s Potential for Outbreak Detection: Avian Influenza Case Study

Yousefinaghani

Dara

Poljak

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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Social media services such as Twitter are valuable sources of information for surveillance systems. A digital syndromic surveillance system has several advantages including its ability to overcome the problem of time delay in traditional surveillance systems. Despite the progress made with using digital syndromic surveillance systems, the possibility of tracking avian influenza (AI) using online sources has not been fully explored. In this study, a Twitter-based data analysis framework was developed to automatically monitor avian influenza outbreaks in a real-time manner. The framework was implemented to find worrisome posts and alerting news on Twitter, filter irrelevant ones, and detect the onset of outbreaks in several countries. The system collected and analyzed over 209,000 posts discussing avian influenza on Twitter from July 2017 to November 2018. We examined the potential of Twitter data to represent the date, severity and virus type of official reports. Furthermore, we investigated whether filtering irrelevant tweets can positively impact the performance of the system. The proposed approach was empirically evaluated using a real-world outbreak-reporting source. We found that 75% of real-world outbreak notifications of AI were identifiable from Twitter. This shows the capability of the system to serve as a complementary approach to official AI reporting methods. Moreover, we observed that one-third of outbreak notifications were reported on Twitter earlier than official reports. This feature could augment traditional surveillance systems and provide a possibility of early detection of outbreaks. This study could potentially provide a first stepping stone for building digital disease outbreak warning systems to assist epidemiologists and animal health professionals in making relevant decisions.

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Online surveillance of media health event reporting in Nepal: digital disease detection from a One Health perspective

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

Digital Biosurveillance for Zoonotic Disease Detection in Kenya

Digital Biosurveillance for Zoonotic Disease Detection in Kenya

Health Reporting Characteristics among Journalists in Nepal Utilizing a One Health Framework

The Assessment of Twitter’s Potential for Outbreak Detection: Avian Influenza Case Study

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