Establishment of Disease Surveillance Systems in Rural Communities of Sierra Leone

Authors: Suluku R*, Macavoray A, Kallon MN and Sesay ME

DOI: 10.23880/izab-16000377

Volume 5, Issue 3

Abstract

Using the native intelligence of rural people to establish a surveillance system reduces morbidity, mortality, poverty, and zoonotic and neglected disease outbreaks among humans and animals. People in rural communities constantly interact with domestic and wildlife, placing them at high risk of exposure to diseases. Health personnel is unevenly distributed, with the majority in the capital cities, making rural communities lack professional health personnel and health care service providers. Poverty limited rural people’s access to health care facilities. Emerging disease outbreaks resulting from complicated environmental changes pose a fundamental challenge in low-income countries, impacting the foundation of human and animal health. People find it difficult to reach medical centers due to a lack of funds. The Animal Health Club engaged thirty (30) villages in a focus group discussion and in-depth interview. Animal Health Club used information obtained to develop a semistructured questionnaire (600) and observed the people during the talks. Community people identify nine sources of diseases, including humans, poultry, wildlife, pets, ruminants’ crops, water, toilets, and garbage dump. The people elected/selected an executive to organize and nominate people to surveillance the nine sources of diseases. Large villages were divided into zones, while smaller villages remain the same. The people identified ten domestic animals and twenty-four wildlife animals in their communities and some diseases associated with them. They also revealed a high level of interaction between domestic, wildlife, and humans in towns and bush in their respective communities. Rural people believed animals transfer diseases to humans in various ways. However, people contract diseases more from human-human interaction than human- animals interaction. The study’s main objective was to explore livestock and wildlife disease interface and transmission chains within the human population in the selected communities and establish community-level epidemiological surveillance systems to reduce disease incidence.

Keywords: Surveillance; Diseases; Rural; Animals; People

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