To assess the effectiveness of a joint human and animal vaccination intervention it is important to understand the relevant vaccination coverage as the proportion of humans and animals vaccinated amongst all humans and animals.

However, in mobile or remote populations no census exists, so we cannot know how many animals and humans live in the study area. Mobility presents a real methodological challenge for researchers. We have previously used electronic fingerprints and mobile communication, but these are only tools and not formal methods of assessment.

What would you do? How could you a) estimate all living animals and humans in an area and b) mark all the vaccinated subjects while dealing with mobility? Please take some time to reflect on these questions. Maybe you would like to take some notes of your thoughts and reasoning.

Lizenz