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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

One World, One Health, One Medicine: An Assessment
of Intersectoral Collaboration in Avian Influenza Control
in Lagos State
Abimbola Aman-Oloniyo*1, Olalekan Allison2 and Musbau A. Razaq3

1Lagos State Ministry of Health, Nigeria; 2Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Nigeria; 3Lagos State Ministry of
Information, Nigeria

Objective
To assess the collaborative efforts in Avian Influenza control that

could be harnessed for the control of other Zoonotic diseases.

Introduction
The livestock sector is vital to the socio-economic development of

Nigeria; it contributes about 9-10% of agricultural GDP. Livestock
represents an important source of high quality animal protein pro-
viding about 36.5 % of total protein intake of Nigerians (1). Lagos
State, located in the south-western part of Nigeria, has the smallest
landmass (3577 sq. km) and the highest human population density
(2519.75 per sq. km) in the Country (2). The State has a poultry pop-
ulation of 2.5 million birds and the largest outlet for poultry products
with 207 Live bird markets, 375 poultry farms and a large number of
poultry products consumers (3). Avian influenza (“bird flu”) is an in-
fectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza
virus. The infection is known to cross species barrier to infect hu-
mans (4). Between March 2006 and September 2007 Avian influenza
(AI) outbreaks occurred in 99 poultry farms in Lagos State (3). The
only human case of AI in Nigeria was detected at a health facility in
Lagos in January 2007.

Methods
Following the AI outbreaks in Nigeria, a lot of human and mate-

rial resources were devoted to the control of AI in the Health, Infor-
mation and Veterinary sectors at all levels of administration. A desk
review of the AI response activities and collaborative efforts at the
State level was conducted.

Results
The inter-ministerial State Steering Committee and State Techni-

cal Committee on Avian Influenza (STCAI) were established com-
prising of stakeholders in the Health, Information and Veterinary
sectors drawn from public and private institutions. A number of in-
terventions were carried out including formation of Public enlight-
enment, Health and Veterinary sub-committees to deal with
sector-specific issues. Also, reconstitution and training of State and
local council Epidemic Response Teams (ERT), training/retraining
of State and local council Health, Information and Veterinary offi-
cers on Epidemic Preparedness and Response to Avian Influenza, es-
tablishment and equipping of desk offices in the State departments of
Health, Veterinary and Information, and appointment of AI desk of-
ficers the local council level. These interventions facilitated the con-
duct of joint surveillance of poultry and live bird markets by
stakeholders, joint outbreak investigation and response, joint sensiti-
zation of Human and animal Health workers on AI, joint public en-
lightenment and community/grassroots mobilization activities
(including advocacy visits to local government council administra-
tors, traditional leaders and trade union leaders) on Avian Influenza
Control. All of these were instrumental in the quick containment of
AI in Lagos State.

Conclusions
The collaboration between Health, Information and Veterinary de-

partments following the AI epidemic helped to curb the disease within
the State. A good structure has been put in place for control of AI that
can be harnessed for the control of other Zoonotic diseases in the
spirit of One World, One Health, One Medicine (OWOHOM).

Figure 1. Clinico-Epidemic Curve of the Investigated Human Case of Avian
Influenza.

Keywords
Collaborate; Avian Influenza; Zoonotic

References

1. The Integrated National Avian and Pandemic Influenza Response
Plan, 2007. 3, 19 - 23

2. Reducing Health Disparities in Lagos State- An investment case,
2012. 7-8

3. Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, 2009.
4. World Health Organization. Avian Influenza fact sheet. <www.who.

int/mediacentre/factsheets/avian_influenza/en/>. Accessed July 30,
2007.

5. World Health Organization. Cumulative number of confirmed human
cases of avian influenza A/(H5N1) reported to WHO. <http://www.
who.int/csr/disease/ avian_influenza/country /cases_table2007_07_25/
en/index.html>. Accessed July 30, 2007.

*Abimbola Aman-Oloniyo
E-mail: bimskoms@yahoo.com

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e188, 2013