Livestock disease surveillance through the use Smart Phone Application in Isiolo County, Kenya

Abstract

The specific goal of this study was to enhance disease surveillance through the community disease reporters (CDRs) on animal health incidents in Isiolo County of Kenya. The disease surveillance was conducted from 10th February 2017 to 22nd November 2018 covering 8 wards from all the three Sub-Counties of Isiolo County namely Isiolo, Garbatulla and Merti.  The surveillance involved the use of web-based mobile phones application to upload and transmit disease cases, pictures and GPS locations to the Country Veterinary Department. Purposive and convenience sampling were used to select the households due to vastness and mobility of the pastoralists. A total of 194 households were selected for the study. The major findings were; 80% men and 20% women participated as household heads.  A total of 283 reports were collected and uploaded by 18 CDRs from the 194 households. 17 CDRs (94.4%) were able to upload the data on the same day on which it was collected, 7 CDRs uploaded the data one day after it was collected, 8 CDRs (44.4%) uploaded the data within 2-6 days after collection with the same number of CDRs taking 15-31 days.  For reported cases, cattle (67%), camels (72%), sheep (71%) and donkeys (90%) as well as poultry (33.3%) were attended to by the Veterinary Department.  Overall, 60% (164/283) of all the livestock disease cases reported were followed or seen by the Veterinary Department. Of the diseases reported, Isiolo sub-county reported more cases in goats, cattle and poultry, while Garbatulla sub-county recorded the highest number of cases in camels and sheep.  In all the three sub-counties, the most reported livestock disease cases were of goats. Based on the findings above, CDRs can detect and transmit real-time to near-real time livestock diseases information using web-based smartphone applications to help veterinary services to analyse and respond