Implementation of the One Health approach to fight arbovirus infections in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Region: Assessing integrated surveillance in Serbia, Tunisia and Georgia

Abstract

Background: In the Mediterranean and Black Sea Region, arbovirus infections are emerging infectious diseases. Their surveillance can benefit from one health inter-sectoral collaboration; however, no standardized methodology exists to study One Health surveillance.

Methods: We designed a situation analysis study to document how integration of laboratory/clinical human, animal and entomological surveillance of arboviruses was being implemented in the Region. We applied a framework designed to assess three levels of integration: policy/institutional, data collection/data analysis and dissemination. We tested the use of Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) to graphically present evidence of inter-sectoral integration.

Results: Serbia, Tunisia and Georgia participated in the study. West Nile Virus surveillance was analysed in Serbia and Tunisia, Crimea-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever surveillance in Georgia. Our framework enabled a standardized analysis of One Health surveillance integration, and BPMN was easily understandable and conducive to detailed discussions among different actors/institutions. In all countries, we observed integration across sectors and levels except in data collection and data analysis. Data collection was interoperable only in Georgia without integrated analysis. In all countries, surveillance was mainly oriented towards outbreak response, triggered by an index human case.

Discussion: The three surveillance systems we observed prove that integrated surveillance can be operationalized with a diverse spectrum of options. However, in all countries, the integrated use of data for early warning and inter-sectoral priority setting is pioneeristic. We also noted that early warning before human case occurrence is recurrently not operationally prioritized.

Keywords: Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Fever; One Health; West Nile virus; arboviruses; surveillance; vector-borne infections.

Figure 1

Inter‐sectoral interactions as per BPMN visualization. We highlighted only information flow among units of different sectors (hiding all the communication flows emerging from units in the same sector). We identified five different information channels: 2 are bidirectional (meaning the information trigger can have both the units as input and are identified by the first letter “B”) and 3 are mono‐directional (identified by the initial letter “X”). In details: B‐HV is a bidirectional flow between Human (H) and Veterinarian sector (V); B‐HE is a bidirectional between Human (H) and Entomological sector (E); X‐HV is an information flow originating from Human sector and targeting the Veterinarian one; X‐HV2 is another information flow originating from Human sector and targeting the Veterinarian one; X‐HE is an information flow originating from Human sector and targeting the Entomological one. LSS: Local health authorities; LMA: Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture; NCDC: National Centre for Disease Control; NFA: National Food Agency; PHC: Primary Health Care; ZDL: Zonal health authorities [Colour figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]