Tools for surveillance system evaluation: Reviewing the need for participatory approaches

While the need for effective animal health surveillance is widely recognised for diseases management, most veterinary services are facing significant budget constraints. There is a real need to develop cost-effective surveillance systems. To ensure quality of these systems, there is a further need to design comprehensive, timely, effective and affordable evaluation frameworks. Depending on epidemiological, sociological and economic factors, animal diseases surveillance systems can be complex, likewise the choice of attributes to describe them and therefore the choice of methods and tools to evaluate them. Participatory approaches could provide the framework needed to tackle that complexity with sufficient flexibility.