The Uganda-UCL project driving innovative approaches to zoonotic disease

Over several years, a collaboration between UCL and UVRI has enhanced our understanding of zoonotic diseases that can pass between animals and humans, ushering in new ways to monitor and control them.

Uganda’s ‘cattle corridor’ is an agricultural-ecological (or agroecological) zone that stretches diagonally from the southwest to northeast of the country, representing 35% of the total land mass. It is vital for Uganda's livestock industry and domestic food production; but being semi-arid, is vulnerable to ecological shocks, climate change and the emergence of infectious diseases.

Given the proximity of humans and animals here, zoonotic diseases that pass between species are a particular concern. They include Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), Rift Valley fever, and brucellosis. They can cause serious disease in humans and sometimes lead to abortions and other consequences in livestock, with substantial economic repercussions for farmers. However, there is much we still don’t understand about the overall burden and epidemiology of these diseases.

“Quite rightly, HIV, TB and malaria get a lot of attention and funding because they cause a huge amount of disease and mortality; but that can be at the expense of other diseases,” says Professor Nigel Field, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the UCL Institute for Global Health. “Historically, there has also been a rather siloed, disease-centric approach to zoonotic pathogens which may have held the field back.”

A One Health approach to research

Professor Field first became involved with neglected zoonotic diseases in Africa in 2019, through a UCL Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) grant. This work provided new evidence about the species of tick that was responsible for carrying CCHF in Uganda, and crucially cemented a partnership with the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) and a network of scientific field workers in the country. This was facilitated by the Pan-African Network For Rapid Research, Response, Relief and Preparedness for Infectious Disease Epidemics (PANDORA-ID-NET).

“These field workers go into communities and are very good at building trust with the people and collecting a huge amount of data and samples in a very short space of time. Meanwhile, our expertise at UCL is more in the integrated analysis of complex datasets and also helping with capacity building of these analytical skills,” Professor Field explains.

In 2022, a major new project launched, led by UVRI and drawing on the expertise of the UCL IGH and the UCL Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, through an agreement brokered by UCL Consultants (UCLC). Other collaborators are listed, inset.

The project, titled Surveillance, control and prevention of neglected zoonotic diseases in Uganda is led by Dr Julius Julian Lutwama, Deputy Director at UVRI, with Professor Field as principal consultant. It is part of the wider Collaborative One Health Research Initiative on Epidemics (COHRIE), where Dr Lutwama serves as Uganda Project Lead. The ‘One Health’ approach – which is advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other bodies – focuses on addressing the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health in research and practice.

“It’s hard to do One Health well, says Dr Lutwama. “It’s often possible to get two parts – say animals and humans, or environment and humans, but rarely all three. While there might be some gaps in our approach, I’m confident we have captured data on environment, animals, vectors and humans, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data, in a way which I think is quite unique.”

Integration and analysis

The team has now gathered samples from around 35,000 mosquitoes, 12,000 ticks, 4,000 humans, plus similar numbers of cattle and goats. Disease prevalence data is being integrated with environmental and climate data, including temperature, grassland coverage and change in the landscape over time, alongside individual-level human data, including characteristics like age and occupation, as well as behavioural and animal interaction.

There are around 96 villages involved in the project and each village has one or two Community One Health Volunteers (COHVs) totalling to 127 who have been identified as having some level of health or veterinary expertise (but not necessarily formal training). The COHVs have responsibilities for regular village and household-level data collection, including about possible outbreaks of diseases in humans or their livestock. The project has enhanced the capacity of the One Health Laboratory at UVRI and strengthened the COHVs network operating within targeted conservation areas in Uganda.

“The challenge is to put all that data together and understand how people’s interactions with animals, and interactions between the animals and the landscape, might be driving these diseases. Then we derive understanding about the way in which a virus or bacteria is being transmitted in the environment, which might inform policy,” says Professor Field.  

Crucially, the UCL team encompassed researchers from the Division of Biosciences, including Dr Rory Gibb, a computational biologist whose research focuses on understanding how social, ecological and climatic changes drive disease transmission. “One of the exciting challenges of such rich data from complex, multi-species diseases has been figuring out how to analyse the data in an integrated way to understand how these systems work,” says Dr Gibb.

A responsive surveillance network

Overall, the project is helping to build up a more complete picture of zoonotic diseases in the cattle corridor. It has helped to train more scientists and students in Uganda through delivering sessions on ecology and epidemiology. There have also been opportunities led by the UVRI team to meet with local and national policymakers and politicians which has raised awareness about the diseases and led to discussions about future policy.

The work of the team has laid the foundations for future projects and could support novel interventions currently in development. For example, there is currently a tick vaccine being introduced in Uganda, and evaluation of this vaccine might be informed by the team’s work.

“If you want to be able to measure how well it works, you've got to understand the epidemiology and the ecology extremely well to be able to measure it. In the future, the kind of work that we're doing will inform how vaccines are designed and tested and then ultimately how they are evaluated,” says Professor Field.

Setting a precedent

The IDRC funding terms stipulated that the grant-holder had to be in Uganda – in contrast to many similar projects, where the funding tends to go to institutions and principal investigators in high-income countries.

“It turns on its head the typical grant set up and meant that we were third party consultants to UVRI; they were our client and calling the shots, working out what the study should look like, and I think it's probably the way it should be,” says Professor Field, crediting UCLC with the smooth administration of contracts and details.

“They just made it work seamlessly. There were some challenges in setting it up, but in the long run, it’s been a good way to do the project. I would definitely work with UCLC again as a result of the experience.” 

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Rachel Beaumont, 2025

 

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