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Globally, veterinary service delivery is tasked with ensuring the wellbeing of animal and associated public health. Although the manner of execution of services differs between countries, most veterinary departments have related concerns. In particular, the impact of diseases on the financial success of livestock agriculture, and in the case of zoonoses (infectious disease that can be transferred from animals to humans) the threat to public health. One of the most important means of doing this is through surveillance activities, which can initiate responses to outbreaks and consequently limit the effect of a disease on both animal and human morbidity and mortality.

Web-based technologies are proving instrumental in information management and communication. Consequently, many veterinary surveillance activities use this medium to varying degrees to present and report zoonoses outbreaks.  While many developed countries strive to offer real-time web-based reporting and surveillance strategies to support veterinary service delivery, such initiative are lacking in South Africa.

This study examined various developed countries veterinary service strategies in order to ascertain how they manage animal health data in order to reduce the spread of zoonotic diseases. In particular, attention was paid to web-based veterinary surveillance and reporting models. These findings in conjunction with guidelines for global surveillance has resulted in the proposed web-based model for South Africa. The model addressed the four core area by which surveillance systems should be analysed. Hence, the proposed model being web-based offers broad coverage, quality information gathering, timeliness by supporting near real-time updating, and transparency via open reporting and sharing of information.