Mining corridors as emergence interfaces: an evidence-informed one health operational framework for prevention of infectious disease outbreaks in Kédougou, Senegal

Abstract

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining has rapidly reshaped southeastern Senegal's Kédougou region from a sparsely populated savanna-forest landscape into a highly connected frontier marked by land-use change, intense population mobility, and fragile basic services. Over the past decade, this corridor has recorded clustered outbreaks and warning signals involving mosquito-borne, tick-borne, and water-associated infections, including sylvatic dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, and hepatitis E. These events suggest that mining settlements can function both as amplification sites, where ecological disruption, mobility, and weak services increase transmission risk, and as detection nodes, where clustered febrile illness may reveal emerging threats early. Using Kédougou as a case example, this Conceptual Analysis synthesizes outbreak experience, operational lessons, and published evidence to propose an evidence-informed One Health operational framework for mining corridors. The framework brings together fever triage and specimen referral, targeted vaccination for mobile populations, frontier-adapted mosquito and tick surveillance and control, minimum water and sanitation standards, community engagement, and joint One Health investigations supported by selective genomic sequencing when operationally useful. Rather than reporting an implemented intervention, this paper offers a structured prevention model for prospective adaptation, implementation, and evaluation in mining-affected frontier settings. The framework is intended to help districts strengthen routine services, support prevention of spillover and amplification, and improve cross-border preparedness in ecologically and socially dynamic mining corridors.