Syndromic One Health surveillance using mobile technology in rural populations in Chad
Contact Person: Salome Dürr
Duration: 2019 - 2023
A close cooperation of the human and animal health sectors (an essential aspect of the One Health approach) provides effective and sustainable contribution towards achieving and maintaining healthy populations. Surveillance is a core part in preventing and controlling diseases. Surveillance systems in low- and middle-income countries are often insufficient, particularly in rural areas. In Chad, 78% of the total population live as agro-pastoralists and they are largely excluded from health services. Additionally, they live in close cooperation with their animals and the consumption of raw milk and meat raises the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. Integrated surveillance of humans and animals has therefore great potential to make disease prevention and control more efficient.
In this project, we aim to address this problem by implementing and evaluating a syndromic surveillance system, using mobile phones (named “SySMob”), for agro-pastoralists and their animals in two defined districts in Chad. Syndromic surveillance focuses on pre-diagnostic indicators, such as symptoms, for which particular medical knowledge on diseases is not required. SySMob will follow a cascade of information transmission on clinical cases in humans and animals from the peripheral (community) level, over the regional (local health centers and veterinary posts) to the central level (One Health Unit in the capital N'Djaména). The goal of the new surveillance system is to increase the timeliness (time to detect a disease is aimed to be reduced to 48-72 hours) and sensitivity (likelihood to detect a disease) in both, humans and animals, through an integrated One Health approach.
With the implementation and evaluation of a One Health syndromic surveillance system, this project will serve as an example for an innovative, integrated surveillance system in human and animal populations for other countries with similar living conditions.
This is a collaborative project with the IRED (Institut de Recherche en Élevage pour le développement en Tchad).
