Animal disease surveillance: prospects for development in Pakistan

Surveillance is a continuous and systematic process of collection, consolidation, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of relevant information on the occurrence of health problems. Data from surveillance can be used to calculate the incidence and prevalence of events, to categorise disease distribution by relevant characteristics, to guide investigations into the occurrence of epidemic and endemic disease, and to contribute essential information for the design and evaluation of effective disease prevention and control programmes. Disease surveillance systems should also respond to the information needs of government agencies, agribusiness, academia, producers and consumers. However, in most developing countries, including Pakistan, animal disease surveillance systems are not well developed, and do not produce a desirable quality of information on disease status and trends. In this paper, the authors describe various facets of a generic surveillance system and propose a structure for a surveillance system at district level. Such systems have been designed and implemented for public health surveillance in a number of countries, and may be developed to meet the needs of veterinary public health.