Gaps in health security related to wildlife and environment affecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, 2007–2020

Part 2
Methods
There currently exists no capacity as-
sessment tool for national wildlife or
environmental services that serves as
a parallel to available public health and
veterinary services evaluations.3,15 To
gauge the extent of wildlife and envi-
ronmental coverage in zoonotic disease
efforts, we therefore reviewed published
reports from key processes used to as-
sess national capacity, prioritize national
efforts and leverage programmatic fund-
ing for health security. Reviewed reports
included those published by the World
Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
on the Performance of Veterinary Ser-
vices, and World Health Organization
(WHO) Joint External Evaluation mis-
sions and follow-on National Action
Plans for Health Security (Table 1; avail-
able at: http://www.who .int/ bulletin/
volumes/99/5/20-272690).
We conducted a keyword search
for terms inclusive of wildlife and
environmental risk and monitoring
considerations (Table 1). We reviewed
documents in their published language
(English, French or Spanish) using
keyword translations. We interpreted
the mention of “animals” to be inher-
ently biased towards domestic animals
(pets and livestock, validated by several
reports referring to “animals and wild-
life”). We therefore screened specifically
for “wildlife” and “wild animals”. Given
its prominence in the documents and
lack of specificity, we did not include
the term “zoonotic” in the review of
the WHO Joint External Evaluations
and National Action Plans for Health
Security. We excluded words in stan-
dard headings or introductions, as well
as non-substantive phrases using key-
words in other contexts (e.g. “biosafety
environment”). Our review focused on
infectious diseases, excluding informa-
tion on chemical emergencies.
To identify stated weaknesses and
evidence of an operational surveil-
lance system for wildlife disease and/or
wildlife pathogen screening, we supple-
mented keyword searches by text review
(primarily the chapter on prevention of
zoonotic diseases in the Joint External
Evaluations for strengths, gaps and
recommendations for priority actions).
We recorded search terms as “present”
or “absent” (available in the data reposi-
tory).16 We did not compare scores from
the Joint External Evaluations and Per-
formance of Veterinary Services reports
between countries because of recurring
updates to evaluation tools and because
these indicators were not specifically
designed for wildlife or environmental
considerations. Furthermore, we did not
want to present judgement; our aim is to
help to identify weaknesses that can be
transformed into opportunities for im-
proving or strengthening health security.
We also extracted information on
priority diseases for public or animal
health from the Joint External Evalu-
ations (data repository).16 Although
criteria for priority diseases are not
standardized across countries, the evalu-
ations provided an initial indication of
the types of diseases considered impor-
tant in the context of health security.
Despite the fact that the United
Nations (UN) Convention on Biological
Diversity – the main intergovernmental
treaty for biodiversity and ecosystem
conservation – has officially recognized
the value of a One Health approach,
signatory countries are not obliged to
consider wildlife health or undertake
related activities. To assess the voluntary
uptake of wildlife health considerations
in conservation planning and commit-
ments, we also reviewed the latest ver-
sions of National Biodiversity Strategies
and Action Plans submitted under the
Convention (if published in English),
which serve as the primary mechanism
for national implementation (Table 1
and data repository).16
All reports mentioned above pro-
vide an indication of the primary tools
used by external and domestic funders
to target investments in health security,
animal health, and biodiversity and
ecosystem management, and to provide
a best estimate of existing efforts and
weaknesses.