Résumé
Disease surveillance is a keystone of human, animal, and plant health. It contributes to the prevention and management of epidemics. Over the past two decades, several methodological frameworks have been developed for the evaluation of human and animal health surveillance systems, but such approaches are still lacking in plant health. Here, we aimed at providing one of the first evaluations of a plant pest surveillance system. We applied the semi-quantitative OASIS method, already successfully used for the evaluation of centralized surveillance in animal health, to the French surveillance system of sharka, a viral disease of Prunus trees. A four-member evaluation team conducted semi-directed interviews with 29 professionals covering the different institutions and functions involved in this surveillance system. The evaluation showed that the main strength of the current system is its organization into well-performing regional units that enable adjusting the national surveillance strategy for the application of locally relevant control measures. The main opportunities for improvement were related to system coordination and science-based exploitation of the surveillance data for long-term disease control. We have provided a proof of concept that there is no other obstacle than vocabulary issues to the transposition of the OASIS method to plant diseases, which opens up the possibility to assess other surveillance systems and thus enables to improve their efficiency.