Bridging Policy and Implementation in Foot-and-Mouth Disease Control Through GIS-Enabled Surveillance

Abstract

Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) continues to be one of the most economically important transboundary animal diseases worldwide, with endemic enzooticity within East African cattle corridors. Even though there are supranational and national control protocols, the repeated outbreaks in countries including Uganda imply that there remain weaknesses in knowledge transfer, cross-border disease surveillance and outbreak response. In the present systematic review, we investigate the frameworks and systems available for FMD awareness, monitoring and control in order to identify any gaps that hinder prompt detection and response. A systematic literature review was carried out using research papers, policy documents and institutional reports in peer-reviewed journals (2014-2024). Results suggest that while policies, illusions (such as the Progressive Control Pathway for FMD), can guide strategies, their implementation depends greatly on manual and disaggregated reporting processes also surprisingly non-spatial. Despite their success for spatial cluster analysis and hotspot identification, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), along with digital surveillance tools, have not yet been fully incorporated into routine veterinary practice in low-resource endemic areas. The review recommends the development of an integrated GIS surveillance system to promote better communication, support outbreak monitoring in real time, and improve FMD control. These results justify the development of context-specific GIS-enabled tools to support operational disease surveillance and response.