Prioritization of Zoonotic Disease Using Social Instant Messenger Group

There has been tremendous increase in use of Smartphone throughout the world and it had penetrated from social grouping to various fields of education to telemedicine to elections and what not. There are many scientific groups floating under various social messenger groups viz., Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram etc. Whether such groups can be utilized for making scientific survey and discussions with valid and concrete result need to be evaluated. Also need to study the group behavior in such social group towards participation in such surveys. Thinking of these questions we have formulated a study for prioritizing the important zoonotic diseases for India by taking expert inputs using one of the existing scientific groups through WhatsApp platform. The group consists of 206 members with minimum education level of masters in Veterinary Public Health or related subjects and mostly in academic or scientific level positions includes scholars in the same subject. The question was asked with a window period of 10 days to answer, without influencing any of the members for participation and with two polite reminders. 22.82 per cent (47/206) members responded to the question and at the end we could successfully prioritize the top 6 zoonotic diseases which were rabies, brucellosis, tuberculosis, leptospirosis, Japanese encephalitis, and salmonellosis in decreasing order for priority. Though, the respondent number looks less but as comparison to people responding to any activity in the group which was maximum 22 respondents for a social event during the last one year, this response was sufficient for this task and that too without any extra expenses. This pilot scale study could prove that academic or scientific social group can take the group advantage with out any extra expenses and can come out with a conclusive decision for academic/scientific survey. There is also a good scope for improving such social group apps with regard to such survey so that scientific community can use it with wider application.