Socio-economical evaluation of surveillance systems for emerging animal diseases: merging veterinary and public health issues

Surveillance and control of transboundary animal diseases remains a major challenge for animal production in developing countries. This has become a major public health issue for the developed world with the SARS episode in 2003 and again recently with the threat of pandemic influenzas. Innovative methodologies are greatly needed to evaluate the socioeconomical added value of animal disease surveillance adapted to the specific socio-economic contexts of the developing countries. This should come with the integration of modeling (risk-based surveillance; spatio-temporal immunity levels), socio-economy and epidemiology. Since the emerging and endemism of avian influenza H5N1 subtype in several countries in South East Asia, surveillance networks have been setup and are running but the outcomes of such investments (financial and human resources) have not been carefully evaluated. The objective of our research programme is to develop a novel methodology to evaluate the socio-economical added value of animal disease surveillance and more especially H5N1 surveillance network in South East Asia. In order to do so we apply and integrate different methodology based on social sciences (Social Network Analysis (SNA); participatory approaches), public and animal health economies (DALYS, QUALYS, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit methods) and epidemiology (risk analysis, spatial modeling). Results such as the use of SNA to evaluate the role and positioning of the different actors of the surveillance network will be presented and discussed during the conference. Such study allows the understanding of interaction between actors and the benefit they get with the outcomes of the surveillance network. The aim of this work is to provide valuable tools to decision makers to help them evaluate the best surveillance program to implement within their animal disease risk management policy. Extension off this work to evaluate the socio-economical added value of intervention programs (e.g. vaccination) is ongoing. (Texte intégral