NEXT GENERATION MONITORING OF WILDLIFE HEALTH.
Response
With a grant from Ending Pandemics, we are developing an action plan for implementing coordinated One Health responses to outbreaks of wildlife disease in geographically remote areas of Kenya.
To do this our team will be i) assessing the costs and benefits of participatory wildlife health surveillance to communities who co-exist with wildlife and public health agencies; ii) conducting an assessment of existing One Health response mechanisms to outbreaks of wildlife disease in Kenya, and iii) leading a workshop with conservation and public health stakeholders to develop a pipeline for the co-design of risk reduction measures that can be taken before or after outbreaks of wildlife disease have occurred.
Pipeline for evidence-based One Health responses
With stakeholders, we will review piloted and tested interventions at the wildlife-livestock-human interface to identify illustrative risk reduction strategies for responses to outbreaks of wildlife disease in African rangeland settings. This baseline information will then be integrated into a pipeline consisting of the following participatory steps that stakeholders can follow in response to an outbreak of zoonotic disease in wildlife; i) identification of suitable, pathogen-specific entry points for interventions aimed at reducing risk; ii) assessment of community-level knowledge gaps relating to zoonotic disease risk; and iii) a selection of illustrative risk reduction strategies that can be tailored according to information gathered in steps 1 and 2.
Ultimately, the pipeline will be designed to guide stakeholders through an iterative evaluation and optimization process, through which they can generate locally-relevant and inclusive One Health interventions.
Outputs
EarthRanger Health module
Training blueprints
Training materials so that anyone using EarthRanger can monitor wildlife health too
Training materials so that anyone using EarthRanger can monitor wildlife health too
AI for outbreak detection
Data visualizations
Training materials so that anyone using EarthRanger can monitor wildlife health too
Intuitive visualization of wildlife health and epidemiological data via Tableau
Participatory surveillance & response plans
Data repository
Blueprints for how EarthRanger Health can be integrated into local/national disease surveillance activities and outbreak response plans, within the One Health framework
EarthRanger provides a single location within which can be stored
Reporting
Rangers in the Field
Low cost, cell phone reporting tools - such as the EarthRanger platform - operated by wildlife rangers, are now a fundamental component of protected area management. EarthRanger has been particularly widely adopted and is currently being used on five continents.
The addition of basic animal health parameters to EarthRanger (e.g., geolocation of a sick or dead animal and recording of clinical signs of poor health), will equip rangers working in the world’s most biodiverse landscapes to collect real-time information on the health status of wildlife and livestock populations.
Because EarthRanger is designed to collect and transmit standardized information in real-time, the platform can link rangers directly to veterinary and human health professionals to initiate a coordinated One Health response.
How It Works
Step 1
Rangers enter data
Rangers who spot something unusual whilst on patrol take pictures and complete questions structured around wildlife health syndromes onto the CyberTracker or EarthRanger mobile app
Step 2
Data is pushed to EarthRanger
Data is pushed from the ranger's phone to their local EarthRanger server. ER2ER sharing means that this data can also be viewed in real-time by other stakeholders
Step 3
Instant alerts sent to veterinarians
Automated SMS & WhatsApp alerts containing this data are sent in real-time from the EarthRanger server to select users - such as wildlife veterinarians or conservation units in that area
Intelligence
AI to deliver automated outbreak detection
Once data is within the system, the EarthRanger platform's native algorithms can transform individual reports of sick or dead wildlife into epidemiologically-relevant information.
iHeat maps, coupled with automated cluster-detection algorithms, allow users to pinpoint clusters of wildlife mortality and morbidity that might indicate a disease outbreak. Armed with this information, stakeholders can detect and then monitor the course of disease outbreaks in real time.
