A monitoring system for transboundary foot and mouth disease considering livestock keepers demographic characteristics

Abstract

Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) is a transboundary disease caused by a virus that affects domestic and wild cloven-hooved animals such as sheep, goats, pigs, and buffalos. FMD is transmitted from one animal to another through direct or indirect contact. Apart from other animal diseases, FMD has been given great attention due to its unique behaviour, such as being potentially dangerous, rapidly spreading disease, and it has no cure. Therefore, immediate information flow among livestock stakeholders could help to mitigate FMD. Realizing the importance of animal disease surveillance, many agencies developed systems for monitoring animal health (fast disease reporting and response). The challenge is that they were developed using advanced technologies like web-based and android, requiring skills, internet connectivity, computers, and smartphones to access them. However, most livestock keepers lack these facilities, especially in developing countries. In that case, they deny access to livestock keepers positioned at the grass-root of animals’ disease reporting chain since illnesses always begin with their animals. Therefore, their lack of participation in reporting or receiving animal disease information through the electronic-based animal disease surveillance system causes a delay in identifying and reporting disease cases and provides insufficient information for controlling contiguous diseases like FMD, which require more precautionary measures through timely information sharing. This study aims to bridge the gap between livestock keepers and top-level stakeholders by developing an animal diseases surveillance system named “Monitoring System for Transboundary Foot and Mouth Disease Considering Livestock Keepers Demographic Characteristics (AMoS4T- FMD)”. The system provides a standard platform for sharing FMD-related information between top- level stakeholders and livestock keepers in time using various mobile technologies based on their demographic characteristics. Gairo district in the Morogoro region was selected as a study area. Therefore, the surveillance system was developed and tested in Gairo district settings. However, it has flexible settings to work elsewhere. In Gairo, livestock keepers’ mobile phone usage and demographic data were collected to determine the appropriate mobile technologies to communicate animal disease surveillance information among themselves and top-level stakeholders through AMoS4T-FMD. After that, an algorithm (FMD communication algorithm) which enables livestock keepers to communicate with AMoS4T-FMD using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Short Message Service (SMS) and Robot calls (Robocalls) based on their demographic data was developed. Also, a Model for predicting and alerting FMD outbreaks in the Gairo district using an Agent-Based Simulation modelling technique was developed. Lastly, the FMD communication algorithm and the Agent- ii Based Simulation model were combined into the software using the waterfall model for system development. Finally, the system was tested using verification and validation techniques.