Community entry
CCPZ provides experiential learning in community entry, improving community-connection for town-gown partnerships towards enabling more effective community entry, assessing disease burden and preparing pilot study programme for zoonosis control and prevention. By using the “adopt-a-community” approach in surveillance of zoonoses, CCPZ has promoted rabies, influenza and Lassa fever surveillance and control in West Africa.

Promoting Community Hygiene and Herd Immunity
CCPZ works at community level to plan for animal feeding, watering and grazing environments and to answer the question of achieving sustainable environmental hygiene for animals and humans. The work aims at achieving 90-95% vaccination coverage threshold needed for protective herd immunity in adopted communities. The centre aims at actualizing roll-back agenda on zoonotic diseases in West Africa that have been reported as neglected by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Mindful of periodic accumulation of susceptible population in a community where there is no effective vaccination programme, the centre works through its team to ensure vaccination of humans and animals, observing compliance with local peculiarities for sustainable programming.

 
Zoonoses Identification and Intervention Studies
CCPZ identifies systems of reporting priority zoonoses among humans and animals in a community.  Outbreak notice is carefully reviewed by Zoonoses Experts Committee. The committee summarizes and reports on the extent of outbreak and its implication. Intervention plan is formulated. Outbreak response teams are constituted to carry out confirmation through laboratory tests. In most cases, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is the gold standard confirmatory test at CCPZ.  By policy, zoonosis surveillance and control team is established within local government area or county, comprising human and animal health officials and the private practitioners.  Where the disease is vaccine preventable, vaccination team is engaged, its members are trained to vaccinate. Biosafety kits, human and animal vaccines, and record keeping materials are dispatched. Means of labeling vaccinated animals are supplied.  Unvaccinated animals and humans that remain vulnerable to infection and disease are identified. Community members that are at risk, including the elderly and children are trained on basic hygiene and actions to take about the outbreaks. CCPZ thus builds West African capacity for achieving locally relevant, more effective and efficient approach to control and eradication of zoonoses in adopted communities.