National | PANORAMA

Creating sustainable networks for reporting and response to wildlife mortality

Taking the time to develop effective systems for reporting from remote areas (e.g. local human networks or cell-phone based if available) and ensuring a centralized team that responds to reports and communicates findings to communities is vital for the long-term success of such wildlife mortality monitoring networks

- Good relationships and networks from local to district to the provincial and central levels

- Good coordination across multiple sectors from local to national levels

- Financial and human capacity to respond effectively and in a timely manner to mortality reports

- Access to communication tools e.g. cell phones

If communities don't see effective response or communication with them on findings, they are unlikely to continue to participate in surveillance efforts. Taking the time to build efficient, sustainable multi-sectoral networks with key stakeholders is essential

Documentation and dissemination of results

West and Central Africa

Wildlife Mortality Monitoring Network for Human and Wildlife Health

Lucy

Keatts

Building Trust with Local Communities

Creating sustainable networks for reporting and response to wildlife mortality

Local Capacity Building for Safe Sampling and Testing of Wildlife Carcasses

West and Central Africa

Wildlife Mortality Monitoring Network for Human and Wildlife Health

Lucy

Keatts

Building Trust with Local Communities

Creating sustainable networks for reporting and response to wildlife mortality

Local Capacity Building for Safe Sampling and Testing of Wildlife Carcasses

West and Central Africa

Wildlife Mortality Monitoring Network for Human and Wildlife Health

Lucy

Keatts

Building Trust with Local Communities

Creating sustainable networks for reporting and response to wildlife mortality

Local Capacity Building for Safe Sampling and Testing of Wildlife Carcasses

Implementation of Effective Control Strategies for Disease Spillover From Livestock to Wildlife

Multi-sectoral coordination, and communication and coordination with local communities, are essential to clearly and simply share findings of surveillance and why specific management strategies have been developed and are recommended for implementation. This would include, for example, vaccination of domestic livestock for PPR in areas where their range overlaps with that of significant wildlife populations, protecting livestock health, and reducing the risk of spillover to wild ungulates.

Financial support for vaccination or other management strategies; good coordination and communication between sectors; good communication and relationships with local communities of herders; access to vaccines and appropriate storage capability; human capacity to implement effective vaccination campaign.

Open lines of communication between relevant government sectors and between government and communities as well as and their understanding of the disease epidemiology is essential to implement effective disease control strategies that address the concerns of all stakeholders involved.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Local Capacity Building for Management of Disease at the Wildlife-Livestock Interface

Many nations have limited funding for wildlife health surveillance so developing this capacity and the knowledge of wildlife health and disease epidemiology as it pertains to the wildlife-livestock interface at the local, provincial and central levels is vital for sustained surveillance and for the true value of this surveillance to be realized including its use to implement wildlife-friendly interventions that also support improved livestock health.

External and governmental financial support for development of wildlife health sector including surveillance and diagnostics; interest of host government to develop wildlife health capacity; time and personnel availability to be trained

Developing local capacity for wildlife health surveillance is critical for sustainability of such efforts and sustained One Health benefits

Documentation and dissemination of results

Collection of baseline wildlife health data

Conducting monitoring and surveillance in wildlife (both healthy populations and those showing signs of disease) and routine serological testing for exposure to pathogens frequently shared with livestock as well as more in depth diagnostics e.g. PCR/ NGS on sick/ dead animals support comprehensive understanding of the circulation of pathogens in these populations, geographic and temporal distributions and time-lines of exposure and non-exposure of different populations. Integration of this data with livestock surveillance data contributes to understanding of the epidemiology of diseases and the dynamics of disease outbreaks, including the potential source, to implement effective science-based control strategies.

Financial support for surveillance; human capacity for surveillance, and data management and analysis; access to sites to conduct surveillance; cold chain/ sample storage capacity; capacity for accurate field and/ or laboratory based diagnostics; good coordination between environment/ wildlife and livestock health sectors; openness for result sharing by host government

Coordination and support from the government is essential from the beginning to ensure support for surveillance, understanding of what is being implemented and the goals/ outcomes, good coordination between sectors, engagement to build local capacity and export samples for testing where necessary, host government willingness to be open about diagnostic findings and motivation to amend disease control strategies based on findings. Wildlife health is under-funded in all countries compared with livestock and human health sectors and external donor support is almost certainly required for success of such programs in LMICs and MICs. It takes considerable time and patience to develop truly functional, localized wildlife health surveillance networks, integrated with other national surveillance networks

Documentation and dissemination of results

1. Multi-sectoral coordination for monitoring diseases at the wildlife-livestock interface

Building partnerships across the emergency management, animal health and environment/ wildlife sectors is an important first step for planning and implementation of wildlife surveillance to ensure results are used to guide science-based policy and disease control mechanisms. Convening multi-sectoral meetings to open discourse and share information on the challenges and opportunities to monitoring and management of disease at the wildlife-livestock interface, and to develop smooth communications and trust between and across sectors as well as multi-sectoral surveillance and response networks is critical.

Financial support for coordination meetings; openness of host government to coordination between environment/ wildlife and livestock health sectors; time and patience

Documentation and dissemination of results