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Animal health surveillance terminology:

Summary of key definitions from final report of pre-ICAHS workshop

On Tuesday 17th May 2011, prior to the official start of the International Conference on Animal Health Surveillance, a workshop was held to discuss the terminology used in animal health surveillance.

The final report from this workshop can be downloaded here and a summary of the key definitions have been reproduced on the ICAHS website.

These definitions will be reviewed during the production of a companion paper for publication in early 2012 so if you have any comments or suggestions please send these to Linda Hoinville.

Background

The workshop report provides definitions of general animal health surveillance related terms and lists of characteristics that can be used to describe surveillance activities and attributes that are useful to evaluate these activities.

The aim of producing this summary of animal health surveillance terminology is to facilitate communication between those commissioning, designing, implementing and contributing to surveillance activities to provide a common understanding of these different surveillance activities. This will provide a common understanding of these different surveillance activities so that they can be clearly described. Agreed descriptions of surveillance activities will facilitate comparison and evaluation of these activities thus contributing to the design of appropriate surveillance systems for different surveillance purposes and situations.

The document is designed as a reference document including detailed definitions for a variety of terms that have been used in the animal health surveillance field. Only a selection of these definitions may be required by individual users and these may need to be adapted to suit their own circumstances or needs. This document provides a summary of how others in the animal health surveillance field are using these terms, the intention being to provide a comprehensive summary of the terms that are currently used to enhance understanding and reduce confusion.

The terminology proposed in this document has been developed based on the terminology used by others in both the public and animal health fields (see reference list) as well as in discussions at two international animal health surveillance workshops held in August 2009 and May 2011. The definitions included in this document are based on those developed at the second of these workshops which was held prior to the International Conference on Animal Health Surveillance (ICAHS) in May 2011. These definitions were then modified based on comments received from workshop participants (appendix 1) and others with an interest in animal health surveillance methods (appendix 2). The final definitions were reviewed by individuals or groups from different countries and disciplines (appendix 3) to identify any inconsistencies between the definitions proposed in this document and those currently used in their country or field of expertise. Differing opinions about the use of these terms which were identified at the workshop or in subsequent reviews have been highlighted in footnotes. A more detailed description of the methods used to develop these definitions and a discussion of the decisions made will be provided in a paper which will be submitted to Preventive Veterinary Medicine in early 2012.

A list of the key definitions that are included in the draft report is provided on the ICAHS website (explanatory notes for some of these are included in the full report which can be downloaded using the link above).