title: Situation-based surveillance: adapting investigations to actual epidemic situations.
abstract: Surveillance approaches for wildlife diseases often are based on strategies devised for livestock diseases. Following standard protocols, surveillance sometimes continues after apparent disease elimination. However, in the case of recurrent wildlife diseases that cause decisive morbidity and mortality, efficient and effective surveillance strategies might need to be more dynamic and adaptable to the actual epidemic situation. Here, we evaluated existing surveillance schemes by reanalyzing historic data on three wildlife diseases in Europe: rabies, classical swine fever, and avian influenza. We analyzed the aims of different surveillance activities and the way in which they were performed. Our analyses revealed that static, nonadaptive surveillance was a suboptimal approach. Consequently, we propose and discuss a more adaptive alternative scheme of situation-based surveillance for recurrent wildlife diseases that cause readily recognizable morbidity and mortality.
authors.affiliation: UFZ, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Department of Ecological Modeling, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. hans.thulke@ufz.de
authors.forename: Hans-Hermann
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Thulke
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Eisinger
authors.forename: Conrad
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Freuling
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fröhlich
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Globig
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Grimm
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Selhorst
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Staubach
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zips
mesh_terms: D000820:Animal Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission; D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic; D000835:Animals, Wild; D001717:Birds; D006691:Classical Swine Fever / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000662:veterinary; D004813:Epidemiology / Q000639:trends*; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005585:Influenza in Birds / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission; D008297:Male; D011818:Rabies / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission / Q000662:veterinary; D018571:Sentinel Surveillance / Q000662:veterinary*; D013552:Swine