This PhD opportunity is being offered as part of the LSTM and Lancaster University Doctoral Training Partnership. Find out more about the studentships and how to apply.
| Abstract | The majority of the worlds most marginalised people rely on livestock for household income and socio-economic security. Losses in livestock are directly associated with reduced food availability and household income, perpetuating the poverty trap. In contrast, improved livestock health, for example through use of locally relevant vaccinations, is positively associated with nutritional and socio-economic security and school attendance. Zoonotic diseases in livestock have a dual negative impact on human health as they cause losses in the livestock they infect and can spillover and cause disease in people that are often misdiagnosed and improperly treated. The burden of zoonoses predominantly falls on those living in marginalised communities. In many low and middle income countries, where livestock reliance is high but household income is low, the resources to diagnose and treat zoonoses in people and livestock ill health are lacking. Governments would like to improve access to public health care and livestock health care services but identifying where to start in this process proves overwhelming. The range of zoonotic pathogens and and other causes of health loss in livestock are vast. The causes of health loss in people and animals vary across space and time, remain largely undocumented in areas with limited resources and the competition for resources that could be used to reduce disease burden is high across government sectors. The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme is a consortium of animal and public health experts and economists that aims to provide burden of disease estimates to inform evidence based decision making at sub-national, national and global scales. (https://animalhealthmetrics.org/) This evidence can be utilised by decision makers to advocate for and support spending of resources on areas of animal health where the benefits to livelihoods and human health substantially outweigh the costs. The GBADs programme is analogous to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) work that produces longstanding and constantly evolving metrics to document the burden of diseases in human health. The GBADs consortium has a positive active working relationship with colleagues at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) who produce the GBD metrics and this project candidate will work alongside colleagues from the IHME. The Ethiopian case study to date has been a core component of the GBADs work and analytical methods development. A GBADs working group now exists within the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture. To date, animal health loss in cattle, small ruminants, poultry and equids has been attributed to high level causes (infectious, non-infectious and external) and the burden of Brucellosis and Anthrax in people in Ethiopia have been documented. Dynamic population models, parameterised using literature data and expert elicitation methods, were used to estimate animal health loss for each species and this estimate has been disaggregated into the component parts (infectious, non-infectious and external causes of loss) using expert elicitation methods. The proposed project would work alongside the existing GBADs Ethiopian case study team and the human health theme team, further developing the analytical methods to attribute the animal health loss in cattle to finer level specific causes across species and at local-authority-relevant spatial scales with a primary focus on zoonotic disease losses. The project would use a range of advanced analytical and modelling techniques including but not limited to; generalized linear mixed models and infectious disease transmission models (to attribute losses to different causes) and geostatistical models (to make inferences about loss across space). Models would be parameterised using literature data, data provided by in country experts, government veterinary records (sub-national data available) and ongoing ILRI and public health research projects which the PhD candidate would work closely with. The focus of the GBADs programme is broad, across species, pathogens and other causes of health loss (e.g. external and non-infectious causes such as predation, trauma and nutritional deficiencies). This PhD will focus predominantly on attribution of the losses in cattle (largest contributor to the Ethiopian economy and also incurring the largest health loss ~ US$12 Billion annually) with close attention paid to the burden of zoonotic diseases (affecting both people and animals). There is anecdotal evidence to suggest zoonotic disease losses due to Schistosomiasis and Trypanosomiasis in both people and livestock have been increasing in Ethiopia over recent years but little empirical evidence currently exists to support this. This project would fill some important data gaps with regard to human health losses due to zoonoses as well as the livestock health losses. The Ethiopian livestock population has been categorised into pastoral and crop-livestock mixed systems (and peri-urban dairy for cattle), with livestock losses varying by production system and geographical locations and the burden of human disease also varying based on the agro-ecological system people live and work in. Disaggregating the health losses by species and agro-ecological production system and geographical location is essential for end users so that resources are not wasted controlling diseases that are not locally relevant. The outputs from this project will give policy makers the information they need, and have requested, to allocate disease control resources cost efficiently, in populations where they can be most effective at reducing the burden of animal and zoonotic diseases and improving livelihoods. |
| Where does this project lie in the translational pathway? | T1 - Basic Research,T4 - Practice to Policy/Population |
| Expected Outputs | Recommendations to the Ethiopian government (livestock and agriculture and public health sectors) and donor organisations (e.g. Gates foundation) on what diseases to focus control efforts on in Ethiopia, in different livestock species, to have the most efficient impact on improving livestock survivability and productivity for people in marginalised communities and reducing the burden of zoonoses in people. There would be a publication for the attributed burden in cattle, at locally relevant spatial resolution (district level where data allows), a publication on the burden of zoonoses in cattle and people and a publication on the effect of trialling different interventions such as multi-species or multi-pathogen vaccination programmes focussed on high risk populations. Attribution of the diseases loss from its current three component parts (infectious, non-infectious and external causes) is necessary to move from theory to practical implementation of efficient interventions to mitigate against livestock losses that directly (through zoonotic disease spread and reduced food security) and indirectly (through socio-economic instability). The framework developed for attribution of loss to finer level causes by the PhD candidate could then contribute to the Global Burden of Animal diseases analytical framework as the programme moves forward through the development to implementation phases. |
| Training Opportunities | The student will be able to attend additional postgraduate courses offered at Lancaster University such as programming in R and academic writing, as well as modules from the Health data Science MSc. The student will also have the opportunity to audit modules from the maths and statistics department and the modules from the Health Economics and Policy MSc. Bespoke training on economic modelling will be provided by GC. |
| Skills Required | This project will suit a student who either has a statistical/modelling background at degree or higher level and wants to apply these methods to field data or a human or veterinary clinical graduate who wants to develop skills in modelling. The student should be interested in developing a novel approach to attributing disease burden and identifying key components of the burden that can be targeted with cost-efficient interventions. The student should be interested in working in LMIC setting where disease burden is often high and resources to control disease are scarce. The student should be interested in One Health as a concept and why improving livestock health can be used as a route for people to move out of and away from poverty. |
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Key Publications associated with this project |
Application of Global Burden of Animal Diseases methods at country level: experiences of the Ethiopia case study WT Jemberu, G Chaters, W Asfaw, GB Asteraye… - Revue scientifique et technique (International Office of Epizoontics), 2024 |
| Characterizing Ethiopian cattle production systems for disease burden analysis Y Li, D Mayberry, W Jemberu, P Schrobback… - Frontiers in veterinary science, 2023 | |
| Quantifying cost of disease in livestock: a new metric for the Global Burden of Animal Diseases W Gilbert, TL Marsh, G Chaters, WT Jemberu, M Bruce… - The Lancet Planetary Health, 2024 | |
| Attributing Ethiopian animal health losses to high-level causes using expert elicitation A Larkins, W Temesgen, G Chaters, C Di Bari, S Kwok… - Preventive veterinary medicine, 2023 | |
| Carlotta Di Bari, Narmada Venkateswaran, Christina Fastl, Sarah Gabriël, Delia Grace, Arie H. Havelaar, Ben Huntington, Grace T. Patterson, Jonathan Rushton, Niko Speybroeck, Paul Torgerson, David M. Pigott, Brecht Devleesschauwer, The global burden of neglected zoonotic diseases: Current state of evidence, One Health, Volume 17, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100595 |