Building on demographic surveillance systems in humans, joint human-animal surveillance and disease response systems will be developed to achieve near real-time surveillance-responses for early detection and response to zoonotic diseases applying locally adapted communication technology. Development will start in Chad and will be subsequently implemented, tested and validated in Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania. Disease surveillance systems required three components:

• A defined disease monitoring system,
• A defined threshold for disease level (predefined critical level at which action will be taken),
• Predefined directed actions (intervention).

Objectives:

• The TTP will integrate animal disease surveillance questionnaires within the existing human Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) and use of new technologies (mobile phone) devises to define and establish a feasible surveillance system for zoonosis.
• The following activities will be conducted:
• quantitative and qualitative epidemiology,
• Typing of etiological agents in human and animal,
• Treatment of diseased hosts if possible, vaccination or elimination of diseased animal in collaboration with local established programs.

Research questions

• What tools are necessary for a joint human and animal diseases surveillance?
• How can community involvement improve zoonotic diseases surveillance?
• Cost benefit analysis of joint human-animal diseases surveillance?

This TTP is led by Institut de Recherche en Elevage et en Développement (IRED, Chad) and Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST, Tanzania) with partnerships involving Ifakara Health Institute (IHI, Tanzania), Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS), Makerere University (MAKUN, Uganda) and Swiss-TPH.