Rwanda government's leadership in embracing One health approach to mitigate and control infectious diseases can be a huge lesson to other developing countries to do the same with astounding results.
Rwanda is a potential country for emerging zoonotic diseases due to over population, land change uses, urbanization and diverse wildlife both in protected areas and peri-domesticated wildlife. These drivers provide high risk areas for possible spillover of zoonotic pathogens from wildlife to humans but there was no systematic and coordinated surveillance for wildlife zoonotic pathogens in the country focusing on the wildlife at the human- domestic animal- wildlife interface to inform control and prevention. Preparedness for response in wildlife diseases outbreak in terms of training of relevant staff, both in domestic animals and wildlife was inefficient and the molecular laboratory infrastructure for diagnostic of these pathogens was not there. Baseline data to be used for strategies to control emerging infectious diseases was not existing.
Implementation of this case study was done and funded by the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats Program- PREDICT Project . Initially there was characterization of the specific areas that are potential for spillover events of zoonotic pathogens at the wildlife- human and domestic animal interfaces in the country and identifying possible pathways (interfaces) through which these scenarios would occurs.These interfaces included Contact with tourists/Ecotourism,Contact with workers harvesting crops,Contact with park staff/Intensive wildlife management area and In/near human dwellings. Then there was systematic and targeted surveillance of potential zoonotic viral pathogens in wildlife at these interfaces to assess reservoirs for the pathogens focusing on mainly non- human primates, bats and rodents.