Application of the One Health Surveillance (OHS) Matrix to Evaluate the Disease Surveillance Systems in Gujarat, India: A Policy Content Analysis.

Abstract

An effective disease surveillance system can detect outbreaks of emerging zoonotic diseases early and allow the system to respond immediately and control the epidemic. Gujarat is a western Indian state with a population of more than 65 million humans and 26 million livestock, and it has the respective surveillance systems under the Department of Health & Family Welfare for humans and the Department of Animal Husbandry for animals. A veterinarian is placed on establishing cross-sectoral collaborations between these systems, but the joint collaborative activities and their effect on the early warning response are least understood. This provides an opportunity to conduct a secondary policy content analysis study using the One Health Surveillance Matrix (OHSM). The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of collaboration among human-animal disease surveillance systems for zoonotic disease in Gujarat, India. This study findings highlight a few gaps in the human health surveillance system, such as data sharing, sampling, outreach to decision-makers, and external communication, while the animal health surveillance system exhibits deficiencies in the data dissemination to decision-makers, management and storage of data analysis, interpretation of data, and external communication as per the OHSM evaluation. Despite major differences, there is a possibility of developing the One Health Surveillance system in Gujarat, India which is profoundly documented in this study.