A One Health Approach to the Human-Monkey Conflict in Thailand

In Thailand, we have been faced human-monkey conflict (HMC) for a long time in numerous parts along the country. HMC impacts on public health in aspects of infectious diseases, traumatic injuries, or psychologic stress, because some species may be reservoirs for zoonotic diseases, show aggressive or dangerous behavior, induce stress or be a nuisance to humans. Additionally, the problems are cause of economic loss in both rural and urban areas. Several solutions have been used to solve the problems, such as monkey population control, monkey translocation, public education, and law enforcement. Some solutions could have an effect on various area such as society, economy, ecology, and health. Nowadays, public complains, and conflict reports still on going. Therefore, one health (OH) approach aims to solve the complicated problem that could be the optional for HMC problem resolving. We believe stakeholder participatory, and engagement is the way to increase their satisfied solution. Strengthen network and transdisciplinary work among the stakeholders is a key for problem mitigation and main expected outcome for one health approach.

The project aims to evaluate the current policy of HMC mitigation, then compare the outcome of conflict mitigation by conventional method and OH approach in two different study areas in Thailand. Final step of the project, we aim to evaluate the relative effects of zoonoses on interventions and conflict mitigation.

We will investigate the perspectives of stakeholders on HMC, then develop the system maps and identify the theory of change (TOC) rely on concepts from the NEOH framework. The second step, we will identify potential interventions using fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) which developing from the systems map and TOC. Finally, we will compare the outcome of the intervention plan rely on the output of OH approach at the first study area and the second study area that approach the conflict with conventional method.

At the last step, all collecting data will be useful for developing the agent-based model. We will predict trend of zoonotic disease transmission between human-monkey in the interface area based on information of intervention strategies from FCM.