Disease Surveillance Needs A Revolution

According to this article, the avian influenza crisis has exposed deficiencies in the world’s veterinary and disease surveillance systems. To address these deficiencies in developing countries, researchers at the United States Department of Defense have suggested setting up a network of high-tech labs to monitor the cases of infectious disease. Such a network could speed up and improve the diagnosis of viruses such as bird flu when outbreaks occur.

According to Mark Savey, an epidemiologist who heads animal health at France’s food-safety agency, the lab’s top priority should be building teams of local staff, those who are familiar with the region and its practices. Peter Roeder, of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) agrees stating “[n]o amount of setting international guidelines and publishing global action plans is going to help when you have an organization within the country that doesn’t know what to do.” Local knowledge is crucial to interpreting and assessing data.

The article goes on to say that alongside focusing on local initiatives, there also needs to be a fundamental overhaul in epidemiology. To be effective, disease reports need to be made in real time; lack of funding and lack of data are cited as causes that prevent the epidemiological field from developing sophisticated models of communicable disease.

The article concludes that the situation is slowly improving, and there has been a recent surge of money and resources to the Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Influenza, headed by the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). While it is hoped that these resources will benefit the surveillance of emerging diseases, there needs to be a global structure in place to take international leadership and overall responsibility for emerging diseases, particularly those that move from animals to humans.