A Smartphone-Based Application Improves the Accuracy, Completeness, and Timeliness of Cattle Disease Reporting and Surveillance in Ethiopia.

Tariku Jibat Beyene,Ashenafi Feyisa Beyi,Crawford W Revie,Iain Collins,Yitbarek Getachew,Takele Beyene Tufa,Fentahun Asfaw

doi:10.3389/fvets.2018.00002

Abstract

Accurate disease reporting, ideally in near real time, is a prerequisite to detecting disease outbreaks and implementing appropriate measures for their control. This study compared the performance of the traditional paper-based approach to animal disease reporting in Ethiopia to one using an application running on smartphones. In the traditional approach, the total number of cases for each disease or syndrome was aggregated by animal species and reported to each administrative level at monthly intervals; while in the case of the smartphone application demographic information, a detailed list of presenting signs, in addition to the putative disease diagnosis were immediately available to all administrative levels via a Cloud-based server. While the smartphone-based approach resulted in much more timely reporting, there were delays due to limited connectivity; these ranged on average from 2 days (in well-connected areas) up to 13 days (in more rural locations). We outline the challenges that would likely be associated with any widespread rollout of a smartphone-based approach such as the one described in this study but demonstrate that in the long run the approach offers significant benefits in terms of timeliness of disease reporting, improved data integrity and greatly improved animal disease surveillance.

Highlights

Livestock diseases affect productivity of animals through decreased yield and work output, in addition to direct mortality
The details of the smartphone app used within this study, VetAfrica–Ethiopia, have been described elsewhere [20]
The Bayesian inference algorithm within VetAfrica–Ethiopia uses these data to provide a diagnostic list of the potential cattle disease(s) present of decreasing likelihood

Summary

Introduction

Livestock diseases affect productivity of animals through decreased yield and work output, in addition to direct mortality. In Ethiopia, livestock agriculture accounts for around 20% of the total gross domestic product, 45% of the agricultural gross domestic product [1, 2] and directly contributes to livelihood in around 65% of Ethiopian families [3] In this context, the high burden of livestock disease [4, 5] combined with limited infrastructure, poses significant challenges for animal productivity in the country [6, 7]. Surveillance systems and animal disease monitoring more generally are a major component of health-care systems [11, 12] Such systems are critical to any assessment of existing levels of disease, effectiveness of control programs and, in the context of disease eradication programs, documentation around the continued absence of disease from a given population or region, in addition to the detection of emerging diseases [11]. Presence of robust animal disease surveillance systems benefits human health as around 75% of the emerging infectious diseases that affect humans have their origin in animal populations [13]

Methods

Results

Conclusion