WildHealthNet Southeast Asia: Operationalizing Wildlife Health Surveillance for One Health
Summary
The Wildlife Health Surveillance Network, known as WildHealthNet, is a regional initiative supporting national governments in Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam to build and implement national wildlife health surveillance strategies. The project has enhanced the ability of these nations to safely detect, monitor, trace, and report emerging pathogens in wildlife, to facilitate more rapid response and mitigation. The system has already detected trans-national disease outbreaks of zoonotic diseases and pathogens of economic, wildlife, and human health significance. More rapid identification of wildlife pathogens benefits public health, livestock health, rural livelihoods and food security, and conservation.
Classifications
Region
Scale of implementation
Ecosystem
Theme
Species Conservation and One Health Interventions
One Health
Challenges
Sustainable development goals
Aichi targets
Sendai Framework
Challenges
Human encroachment into natural areas, climate change, and the commercial wildlife trade, bring people, wildlife, and livestock into closer and more frequent contact, increasing the “spillover” risk of zoonotic-origin diseases like Covid-19, Ebola, HIV, and SARs. Over 70% of emerging zoonotic diseases originate from wildlife. Despite the relevance of wildlife pathogens for biodiversity, livestock, and humans, established wildlife health surveillance programs remain rare. A 2021 review found almost 60% of reporting countries had no evidence of functional wildlife surveillance. WildHealthNet supports government partners to develop wildlife surveillance programs that integrate with existing national surveillance and One Health platforms. The approach connects people who encounter wildlife, including rangers, hunters, and animal rescue centers, with stakeholders who can take action to analyze disease threats and try to prevent their spread.
Beneficiaries
- Wildlife and conservation
- Rangers
- Communities (those reliant on wildlife for food or economic security, those who have close contact with wildlife, and those whose domestic animals interact with wildlife)
- National and global public health
Building blocks
How do the building blocks interact?
The first three building blocks are the foundations that support the fourth building block: an effective multisectoral One Health response. Building networks and national strategies that define roles and processes; bridging capacity for each of the specific stakeholders; and introducing appropriate open technologies to support reporting and data management and sharing together enable the translation of data into actions that can protect wildlife, human, and animal health and well-being.
Impacts
WildHealthNet enabled the first detection of African Swine Fever, a devastating domestic pig disease, in free-ranging wildlife in all three project countries (Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam) and identified biosecurity breaches that contributed to its spread. The network discovered a transnational outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in important wetlands and rapidly informed public and livestock health partners to limit onward transmission. In Cambodia, the identification of Lumpy Skin Disease in a dead endangered banteng led to vaccination of livestock in communities bordering protected areas. The government of Laos recently adopted and codified the network’s reporting structure. We aim to build on this progress to create regional and then global networks of countries. implementing WildHealthNet.
Pictures
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