Vets…
Researchers…
Epidemiologists…
It. has. happened.
This is a public service announcement. Albeit a very niche one.
The WOAH is finally making the raw data from WAHIS available for bulk download.
It was previously a nightmare to access the animal disease reports. Especially if you needed a lot of them.
Right click → save file as… → report_59113.csv
A few helpful bootleg efforts had popped up in the literature (and obscure forums) trying to automate these downloads. However these sticky-tape solutions were often fragile and usually required coding knowledge.
A non-starter for a lot of people.
I too worked on a tool to fix the WAHIS bulk data problem. It was mildly successful. But I often got a ping in the inbox begging for help.
I’d then cave, run the program from my computer, and send it to them over email.
FOR SCIENCE!
Thankfully, it no longer needs to be that way…
Dr. Alejandra (from Peru) recently informed me you can now get the data straight from the source!
This means:
1) Most reports are now downloadable from WAHIS directly
2) All weekly reports can be accessed through direct requests to WOAH.
3) If you need all events for a specific disease – contact them!
HERE IS THE LINK WITH MORE INFORMATION
Unless I hear from researchers, I’ll consider this a solved problem.
Happy data crunching – and go outside, it’s good for you.
Cheers,
Loic