Can Citizen Science Contribute to Avian Influenza Surveillance?

ABSTRACT: Global change is an important driver of the increase in emerging infectious diseases in recent decades. In parallel, interest in nature has increased, and different citizen science platforms have been developed to record wildlife observations from the general public. Some of these platforms also allow registering the observations of dead or sick birds. Here, we test the utility of live, sick and dead observations of birds recorded on the platform Observation.org for the early detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) outbreaks in the wild in Belgium and The Netherlands. There were no significant differences in the morbidity/mortality rate through Observation.org one to four weeks in advance. However, the results show that the HPAIV outbreaks officially reported by the Wo

SUBMITTER: Saavedra I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10535995 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature