CROSS-CUTTING AREAS Surveillance stream By Mbhekiseni Khumalo of the Department of Health, South Africa In 2023, South Africa adopted the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy, which aims to improve the capacity of national surveillance systems. The pillars of the strategy include collaboration, integration and coordination, and these form the basis of the One Health Approach. The key One Health role players in South Africa are the national departments of Health, Agriculture, and Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment. Public health events and disease threats rarely respect sectoral boundaries – zoonotic pathogens can move from wildlife to livestock to humans; climatedriven changes in vector ecology shift the distribution of diseases like malaria and Rift Valley fever; and environmental degradation can create conditions that are conducive to public health events or outbreaks. The IDSR strategy reflects these complexities by integrating and linking surveillance systems across human health, animal health and the environmental sector to enable early detection, timely reporting, accurate risk assessment, and a more rapid, coordinated response. The findings of South Africa’s Joint External Evaluation (JEE) highlighted several strengths on which to build. There is existing legislation governing the disease notification system in the human and animal health sectors. The country’s extensive laboratory network, which spans public reference and private laboratories, supports prompt event verification and confirmation across both human and animal sectors. At the national level, strong analytical capacity enables the regular production of epidemiological bulletins and disease-specific surveillance reports. South Africa’s demonstrated ability to mobilise multisectoral coordination during outbreaks illustrates the country’s capacity to translate surveillance data into timely public health action. The JEE also revealed gaps and fragmented surveillance systems within human health sectors and across One Health sectors that negatively affect the efficacy of South Africa’s surveillance systems. Furthermore, the JEE highlighted that there are no formal protocols governing surveillance data exchange across One Health sectors. The absence of data-sharing agreements meant South Africa produced bulletins focused only on human health, with minimal involvement of the animal health and environmental sectors. 17
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI0MzQ=