Local Capacity Building for Safe Sampling and Testing of Wildlife Carcasses

With limited funding for wildlife surveillance and veterinary medicine in the country, and limited access for subsistence communities to adequate health care, increasing awareness of the importance of wildlife health as it pertains to human and livestock health at local, provincial, and central levels is essential. Introducing preventative approaches and building local capacity for wildlife surveillance is key to reducing human health risks from contact with wildlife. Bringing diagnostic capacity from other nations into the country itself and ultimately to the carcass side enables better local engagement and rapid response and mitigation efforts in the case of detection of a pathogen of concern 

- Long-term external financial support for the development of the wildlife health sector including surveillance and diagnostics

- Long-term funding to develop the capacity of communities to engage in preventative approaches, participatory surveillance and wildlife sampling

- The interest of the host government to develop wildlife health capacity and designation of time and personnel availability to be trained

Enhancing local understanding of the importance of wildlife health for human and livestock health and developing local capacity to conduct effective wildlife surveillance is critical to achieving sustained One Health benefits