Abstract
Rabies and anthrax, being natural focal diseases, are characterized by the ability to persist in areas with a certain combination of environmental factors without human intervention. These infections annually cause sporadic outbreaks in domestic, livestock and wild animals in the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK) receiving close attention of the veterinary service. In particular, targeted mass vaccination and surveillance are conducted, which requires zoning of the country according to the exposure to the diseases.This paper presents a zoning approach based on the estimation of suitability to the study diseases using the Environmental Niche Modelling method. Retrospective data on animal rabies outbreaks in the RK for 2003-2014, as well as data on anthrax burial sites for 1933-2014 were used. The following environmental factors were treated as potential explanatory variables: 1) a set of climate data derived variables BIOCLIM; 2) altitude above the sea level; 3) land cover type; 4) the maximum green vegetation fraction and 5) soil type.The modelling outcomes for both diseases indicate elevated risks along the northern and southeastern borders of the RK that not only follows the distribution of historic disease cases, but also accounts for potentially suitable environmental conditions. To comply with the requirements of the veterinary service, gridded risk maps were converted into categorical maps by averaging risk values within municipal districts and ranking according to four categories: low, medium, high, and very high.The maps obtained may be used as recommendations to the veterinary service as a basis for developing regionspecific anti-epizootic measures.
Highlights
The prevention and elimination of zoonotic infections remains a priority and responsibility of veterinary science and practice
Zoning is of great practical importance and allows focused attention of regional veterinary services to the territories, which have the highest level of zoonotic occurrence and the greatest potential for recurrent outbreaks, based on a combination of favorable landscape-climatic factors coupled with the presence of historically registered foci of diseases (Norstrøm 2001)
Databases on historic outbreaks of rabies and anthrax in the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK) were used as input presence data, while the set of ecological and climatic variables BIOCLIM along with some geographical parameters was used as explanatory factors
Summary
The prevention and elimination of zoonotic infections remains a priority and responsibility of veterinary science and practice. Rabies is a highly dangerous zoonotic disease This is a viral disease that affects all warm-blooded animals and humans. Anthrax may be considered “old” and well-studied disease, but the problems associated with its prevention in animals and humans are still unresolved. Research and applied developments provide tools that are both relevant and required for ensuring the country’s biological safety regarding the study infections These tools allow the visualization, zoning, mathematical modelling, and predicting the risk of re-emerging outbreaks of the diseases. Zoning is of great practical importance and allows focused attention of regional veterinary services to the territories (regions, districts, settlements), which have the highest level of zoonotic occurrence and the greatest potential for recurrent outbreaks, based on a combination of favorable landscape-climatic factors coupled with the presence of historically registered foci of diseases (Norstrøm 2001). Databases on historic outbreaks of rabies and anthrax in the RK were used as input presence data, while the set of ecological and climatic variables BIOCLIM along with some geographical parameters was used as explanatory factors
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