[Disease monitoring and surveillance systems and the role of public and private animal health agents: the experience of Africa].

The current importance of animal diseases, and their emergence or re-emergence, show that surveillance is crucial for defining suitable control measures. Surveillance systems rely on networks of different people, whose activities include collecting, transmitting, analysing and disseminating disease information. These activities can be distributed among both the public and private sectors. However, nowadays it is essential to clearly define the different roles of the public and private sectors. In Africa, where budget cuts for state Veterinary Services over a number of years have promoted the growth of private veterinary medicine, the tasks of public officials (veterinarians, technicians, etc.) and private sector workers (veterinarians, livestock farmers) must be clearly determined and harmonised. This article presents and comments upon a number of different experiments that various sub-Saharan African countries have conducted in this field.