About this Research Topic

Background

The socioeconomic burden of disease is defined as the impact a disease has on society measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. The socioeconomic burden of animal diseases is mainly estimated using economic models based on monetary costs. These economic models miss out on the non-monetary burden of disease, which is very significant especially in sub-Saharan Africa where the social value of keeping livestock sometimes outweighs the economic value. Cattle provides both direct and indirect benefits to resource-poor communities. Cattle represents a direct source of food like milk and meat, an advantage in agriculture (both as a source of draught power and manure), and a reservoir of wealth and a valuable cultural benefit. Therefore, when cattle loss occurs due to disease, the impact cuts across all societal levels. As such its direct costs need to be estimated using market prices. The indirect costs associated with cattle loss are more difficult to estimate even though their impact may be more important than the direct financial costs. These indirect costs need robust mathematical and non-mathematical models to access the non-monetary burden of disease.

Literature is scarce on the metrics for accurate estimation of non-monetary burden of livestock disease despite the societal value of livestock outweighing the monetary value in the developing world. A few studies have attempted to estimate zoonotic disease burden using a modification of Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by converting the non-monetary disease burden into monetary burden using zDALYs based on time trade-offs. This, however, was related to zoonotic diseases based on the pretext that they affect both humans and animals thus a time trade-off could be applied. The studies did not apply zDALYs to non-zoonotic livestock diseases such as East Coast fever and Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia in the context of the developing countries, namely Sub-Saharan Africa.

This Research Topic will cover Original Research, Systematic Reviews, Mini Reviews, and Perspective articles on non-monetary societal burden of animal disease, focusing on the following themes:

-Societal burden of transboundary animal diseases.
-Societal burden of animal diseases management.

Keywords: Societal burden, Non-monetary benefits, Animal Health, Livestock management disease, Non-Zoonotic

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