Animal health surveillance, Vietnam

Case study Identity Card

Long title: Innovative approaches for the evaluation of animal health surveillance systems
Geographical coverage of the case: Vietnam (National)
Case study team: Marisa Peyre (CIRAD, ASTRE), Flavie Goutard (CIRAD, ASTRE), Vu Dinh Ton (VNUA), Stephanie Cong (Istom, intern)
Years covered: 2006-….

Case study description

The innovation under study: in Vietnam, CIRAD steps up animal disease surveillance to address the risk of transmission to humans

In 2003, an epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 hit Southeast Asia. The World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations therefore commissioned CIRAD to train the Southeast Asian veterinary services in epidemiological surveillance. Three years later, H5N1 influenza hit Europe and some African countries, mobilising the international community to halt the spread of this disease to all African countries and to prevent its introduction from Asia to Europe. This unprecedented crisis was the catalyst for an international initiative to step up health surveillance in the global South.

Avian influenza has an important characteristic: it affects animals, but could potentially spread to humans with dramatic consequences. To address this risk, CIRAD launched a project on the epidemiology of this disease in Vietnam and five African countries. This was the GRIPAVI project, conducted from 2007 to 2011, with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project identified the limitations of national surveillance systems in Southeast Asia, but also in Africa, in order to analyse the epidemiology of the disease and to assess the impact of control measures.

Surveillance is twofold: passive surveillance by farmers and local veterinary services, which must declare any suspected cases, but which under-estimate the number of animals affected by the disease, for various reasons; and active, planned surveillance for commercial farms and live poultry markets, which is hampered by limited human and financial resources.

CIRAD thus set up a project to develop evaluation tools (including technical assessment and optimisation) for surveillance systems for H5N1 influenza in Southeast Asia.

From 2009 to 2011, the project developed two evaluation tools for surveillance systems. The first, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the system as a whole and its organisation (OasisTrop), was adapted to the contexts in Laos and Cambodia. The second, aimed at quantitatively assessing the sensitivity of surveillance (capture-recapture), was implemented in Thailand and Vietnam in 2012.

To enhance the project, in 2010 CIRAD developed an economic evaluation methodology for health surveillance based on the social network analysis method adapted to assess health information flows. From 2011 to 2015, this methodology was applied to the surveillance of swine influenza in Vietnam and Laos. From 2012 to 2016, the researchers and representatives of the different organisations concerned were trained in assessment techniques and evaluation approaches for surveillance systems.

The collective construction of outputs and impact hypotheses

The programme is underway, the outputs are becoming clearer (new evaluation methodologies, training on these methodologies, and new research projects). In turn, the beneficiaries are adopting these developments: the government departments are taking up the new methodologies. But the impacts are not yet in sight.

The project as a whole was nevertheless the subject of an ongoing impact assessment in 2015 based on CIRAD ImpresS methodology.

Based on changes already observed, this methodology can be used to build hypotheses about future impacts: how the research teams mobilised resources (research, training, financing) to produce outputs with the contribution of actors, and the implementation of changes by the beneficiaries, with these changes subsequently triggering impacts.

In order to define these impact hypotheses, CIRAD built on the workshops attended by all of the actors concerned.

The first workshop, in 2015, was aimed at presenting the outputs of research activities on the evaluation of health surveillance in Vietnam and discussing their importance for improving surveillance. The actors involved in the research, beneficiaries of the innovation and policymakers all took part. The goal of this workshop was first to examine how to move from research to policy-making and, second, to engage the actors in the future application of tools and data collection.

Three months later, a second workshop sought to define scenarios for transferring research outputs to policymakers. The participants looked at how to improve health surveillance in Vietnam by answering three questions: what are the strengths and weaknesses of current systems? What actions are needed to improve these systems? And which actors should be involved in these actions and why?

Three major categories of impacts to be achieved were thus identified, with these impacts ranging from the local to the national level: improving animal and human health (health impact); securing livelihoods (economic impact); and avoiding the adverse social impacts of animal diseases (social impact).

A third workshop validated the scenarios defining the impacts of the programme, as well as the actions needed to achieve them.

Scenario 1: Influencing national public policies

This scenario is based on field research projects in Vietnam, involving Vietnamese researchers, the local authorities and local beneficiaries (veterinarians and farmers). The outputs are currently transferred to national policymakers in the form of scientific reports containing recommendations to improve health surveillance, recommendations that may or may not be taken on board.

This approach depends on the involvement of policymakers at the national level. Interviews helped to identify potential obstacles, including the scale of research activities that produce recommendations, and to consider a further step that could prove necessary in order to apply pilot protocols at the national level with the aim of validating outputs before making recommendations.

Scenario 2: Influencing local public policies

This scenario highlights the importance of the local authorities in the implementation of health surveillance and their potential influence at the national level.

Field research outputs are presented to the local authorities to enable them to improve health surveillance. The provincial authority can then take on board the scientific recommendations and implement changes directly within the province. It may subsequently have a potential influence on changes in the surveillance system at the national level.

Scenario 3: Influencing public opinion

The third scenario proposes raising civil society awareness by publicising the scientific outputs. But the Vietnamese media is still largely state-controlled, with all that this implies for supervision and validation of the messages. Another approach would be to inform consumers via the social media that play a key role in mobilising the population around a social fact. This scenario also suggests the dissemination of information by farmers’ associations, but these are still marginal in Vietnam.

In all three cases, the final impact expected from this programme is that it will improve animal health in the countries concerned and contribute to a better economic and social situation for all farmers.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders involved in the innovation process

Value chain stakeholders : farmers; integrated industries
Research stakeholders : Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA); National Institute for Animal Health (NIVR); Hong Kong University-Pasteur Research Center

Stakeholders impacted by the innovation process

Value chain stakeholders : farmers; integrated industries
Research stakeholders : Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA); National Institute for Animal Health (NIVR)
Civil society stakeholders : animal product consumers
Institutional stakeholders : Department of Animal Health (DAH)