-->PNTD-D-25-00848

Scoping review of knowledge, attitude, and practice to zoonotic diseases among abattoir workers and residents in proximity to abattoirs in low-middle income countries

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Dear Dr. Ogbo,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases's publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript within 60 days Sep 27 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosntds@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pntd/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, competing interests statement, or data availability statement, please make these updates within the submission form at the time of resubmission. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pikka Jokelainen, DVM, MPG, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Victoria Brookes

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Shaden Kamhawi

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-4304-636XX

Paul Brindley

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-1765-0002

Additional Editor Comments:

Interesting topic.

Major comment:

All conclusions must be grounded in the data, and be aligned with the study design (both of this study, and of the original studies).

Minor but important editorial comment:

Please carefully check the use of capital first letters and singular vs. plural.

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

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If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.

5) Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

1) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

2) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders..

If you did not receive any funding for this study, please simply state: u201cThe authors received no specific funding for this work.u201d

6) As required by our policy on Data Availability, please ensure your manuscript or supplementary information includes the following:

- A numbered table of all studies identified in the literature search, including those that were excluded from the analyses.

- For every excluded study, the table should list the reason(s) for exclusion.

- If any of the included studies are unpublished, include a link (URL) to the primary source or detailed information about how the content can be accessed.

- A table of all data extracted from the primary research sources for the systematic review and/or meta-analysis. The table must include the following information for each study:

- Name of data extractors and date of data extraction

- Confirmation that the study was eligible to be included in the review.

- All data extracted from each study for the reported systematic review and/or meta-analysis that would be needed to replicate your analyses.

- If data or supporting information were obtained from another source (e.g. correspondence with the author of the original research article), please provide the source of data and dates on which the data/information were obtained by your research group.

- If applicable for your analysis, a table showing the completed risk of bias and quality/certainty assessments for each study or outcome.  Please ensure this is provided for each domain or parameter assessed. For example, if you used the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials, provide answers to each of the signalling questions for each study. If you used GRADE to assess certainty of evidence, provide judgements about each of the quality of evidence factor. This should be provided for each outcome.

- An explanation of how missing data were handled.

This information can be included in the main text, supplementary information, or relevant data repository. Please note that providing these underlying data is a requirement for publication in this journal, and if these data are not provided your manuscript might be rejected.

Reviewers' Comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Key Review Criteria Required for Acceptance?

As you describe the new analyses required for acceptance, please consider the following:

Methods

-Are the objectives of the study clearly articulated with a clear testable hypothesis stated?

-Is the study design appropriate to address the stated objectives?

-Is the population clearly described and appropriate for the hypothesis being tested?

-Is the sample size sufficient to ensure adequate power to address the hypothesis being tested?

-Were correct statistical analysis used to support conclusions?

-Are there concerns about ethical or regulatory requirements being met?

Reviewer #1: In the Methods section, the authors fail to define ‘residents near slaughterhouses’ operationally, leaving the notion of ‘proximity’ unclear—whether it refers to geographic distance, duration of exposure, or functional interaction. While the authors indicate adherence to JBI guidelines for scoping reviews, which do not mandate formal quality appraisal, omitting any assessment of study quality restricts the interpretability of the findings.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: the methodology of the papers selections is not clear. Which were the key words used to select the papers? there´s no statistics once it´s a descritive study. Ethical approval was referred.

**********

Results

-Does the analysis presented match the analysis plan?

-Are the results clearly and completely presented?

-Are the figures (Tables, Images) of sufficient quality for clarity?

Reviewer #1: In the knowledge-related findings (lines 226–239), the authors report percentages without clearly linking them to the corresponding studies. The section on practices (lines 252–273) presents issues as well, combining data on PPE use, raw product consumption, and hygiene without differentiating the relevance of each practice across various zoonotic diseases.

Although the discussion is broad in scope, some interpretations exceed the evidence presented. For example, the claim of a “disconnect between knowledge and behaviour” (lines 287–288) lacks support from statistical analyses, as most studies evaluated either knowledge or behaviour but not both simultaneously. Similarly, the discussion on cultural factors and social norms (lines 302–305) relies heavily on the interpretations of primary study authors, without critically examining how these factors were measured or whether such interpretations are consistent across the nine culturally diverse countries included in the review.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: the limitations of the study are the low numbers of papers selected. The results and tables are clearly presented

**********

Conclusions

-Are the conclusions supported by the data presented?

-Are the limitations of analysis clearly described?

-Do the authors discuss how these data can be helpful to advance our understanding of the topic under study?

-Is public health relevance addressed?

Reviewer #1: Figure 3 (line 317), which presents the conceptual framework, provides a useful visual tool but has important limitations. The proposed causal relationships lack empirical support from the included studies, many of which did not test such associations. In addition, the framework does not adequately integrate structural or policy-level determinants, despite their identification in the discussion as key influences on worker practices.

The synthesis section needs a more critical reflection on the limitations of the primary studies. For example, the overrepresentation of studies from Nigeria and Ethiopia raises concerns about the generalizability of the findings to other low- and middle-income settings. Moreover, while the absence of studies on residents near slaughterhouses is noted, the authors do not fully explore the implications of this gap for public health policy.

Reviewer #2: recommendations need to be more specified and showing examples of the intervention and the address the urgent behaviors that need to be improved.

Reviewer #3: The conclusions are easily discussed once they is already expected for anyone who works in the field. It´s not possible to evaluate the conclusions without the keywords used. Maybe the number of studies could be increased if new keywords are included.

The public health relevance is addressed.

**********

Editorial and Data Presentation Modifications?

Use this section for editorial suggestions as well as relatively minor modifications of existing data that would enhance clarity. If the only modifications needed are minor and/or editorial, you may wish to recommend “Minor Revision” or “Accept”.

Reviewer #1: Major Revision.

Reviewer #2: * regarding the title:" and residents in proximity to abattoirs" it is better to be removed as there is no publications assessed KAP among this group.

* Regarding the introduction: it needs more declaration of the effect of zoonotic diseases on public health.

* Methods: The link shown in line 101 is not correct it needs to be modified.

* line 115: the publication are from 2010 not 2000.

* line 124: comma after if they were should be removed.

*line 202: sample size should be from 107 not 110.

*line 253: what does SH refer to?

** Figure 2 why 2024 is included while the studies are till 2023 and it should be titled number of publications from 2010 to 2023.

*Table 2 is too long it is better to be divided into two tables.

* In the discussion section it needs to be mentioned why attitude is assessed in only 3 papers.

Reviewer #3: The inclusion of key words is crucial for the study to accurately evaluate its conclusions. The authors would consider including other keywords to increase the number of studies.

**********

Summary and General Comments

Use this section to provide overall comments, discuss strengths/weaknesses of the study, novelty, significance, general execution and scholarship. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. If requesting major revision, please articulate the new experiments that are needed.

Reviewer #1: To enhance the manuscript, the authors should expand the methodology to clarify how study limitations informed the synthesis; reorganize the results to enable clearer cross-study comparisons; revise the conceptual framework to align more closely with the available evidence; and deepen the discussion of research and policy implications, especially regarding underserved populations in low- and middle-income countries.

Reviewer #2: It is better to add list of abbreviations and avoid mentioning the abbreviation without the full name in the first time.

Reviewer #3: The study presents the results of a systematic analysis and a framework constructed based on them. Although the results were already expected, they´re fundamental if specifically shown to the government for use in the human health care benefits

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes: ANDRE PERES BARBOSA DE CASTRO

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that authors of applicable studies deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols-->

-->PNTD-D-25-00848R1-->--> -->-->Scoping review of knowledge, attitude, and practice to zoonotic diseases among abattoir workers and residents in proximity to abattoirs in low-middle income countries-->--> -->-->PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases-->--> -->-->Dear Dr. Patricia Uche Ogbo-->--> -->-->Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases's publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.-->--> -->-->Please submit your revised manuscript by 25th November 2025 If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosntds@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pntd/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.-->--> -->-->Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:-->--> -->-->* A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers '. This file does not need to include responses to any formatting updates and technical items listed in the 'Journal Requirements' section below.-->--> -->-->* A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes '.-->--> -->-->* An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript '.-->--> -->-->If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, competing interests statement, or data availability statement, please make these updates within the submission form at the time of resubmission. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.-->

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pikka Jokelainen, DVM, MPG, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Annapaola Rizzoli

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Shaden Kamhawi

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-4304-636XX

-->

Paul Brindley

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-1765-0002

-->

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors, thank you for the revised manuscript. One of the reviewers has one additional comment - asking you to expand on in Discussion why attitudes were the least studied domain.

Editorial comments:

Please align the number of decimals used – e.g. in abstract when referring to proportion of studies, none, one and two decimals are currently used. With 16 included articles, decimals seem too much, and readers expect the numbers. Please edit accordingly, e.g., “The studies were conducted in nine LMICs, with Nigeria (37.5%) and Ethiopia (18.75%) accounting for the highest number.” -> “The studies were conducted in nine LMICs, including six studies (38%) in Nigeria and three (19%) in Ethiopia.

Consider the use of ‘only’ when reporting results, as it shows the attitude. I usually recommend to let the numbers do the talking.

Why is the need for targeted interventions to improve KAP among abattoir workers and expanding research to include nearby residents urgent?

Is there a need to use two terms, ‘abattoir’ and ‘slaughterhouse’ (there is also ‘slaughter house’), to one concept? These are described as “essential for meat processing”, which sounds surprising. The animals arrive to these alive. Line 80 – consider omitting word ‘significant’ as it is easily read as statistically strong. Consider description e.g. “risks are exacerbated by inadequate waste management”, which sounds like all of these would have inadequate waste management – possible edit could be ‘can be exacerbated’

Author summary needs editing to ensure it is clear and sufficiently specific. Zoonotic diseases can transmit both ways, from animals to humans and from humans to animals – this is correctly stated in Introduction. “causing millions of cases and deaths annually” is not specific enough - Introduction says billions of cases and millions of deaths, and specifies it is globally.

Par-veterinarian? Often used term is ‘paraveterinarian’. Please check.

Most disease names are not written in capital full letter in English. E.g. ‘toxoplasmosis’ should be with small first letter; and please note that that study tested for antibodies against T. gondii, and that is not the same as testing for toxoplasmosis, the clinical disease. They use “seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis” but more correct would be to state “Toxoplasma gondii seroprevalence”.

Language checking is needed overall. E.g. line 131 full stop lacking at the end of the sentence. The verbs in Table on page 16 should be all in past tense, now there is present tense: “do not wear PPE” and “wash hand” (should be ‘reportedly washed hands’)

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

1) We have noticed that you have uploaded Supporting Information files, but you have not included a list of legends. Please add a full list of legends for your Supporting Information files after the references list.

2) We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: "All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.". Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition).

For example, authors should submit the following data:

1) The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported;

2) The values used to build graphs;

3) The points extracted from images for analysis..

Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study.

If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories.

If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.

3) Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

1) State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant. For example: "This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (####### to AM; ###### to CJ) and the National Science Foundation (###### to AM)."

2) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

3) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders..

If you did not receive any funding for this study, please simply state: u201cThe authors received no specific funding for this work.u201d

4) As required by our policy on Data Availability, please ensure your manuscript or supplementary information includes the following:

- A numbered table of all studies identified in the literature search, including those that were excluded from the analyses.

- For every excluded study, the table should list the reason(s) for exclusion.

- If any of the included studies are unpublished, include a link (URL) to the primary source or detailed information about how the content can be accessed.

- A table of all data extracted from the primary research sources for the systematic review and/or meta-analysis. The table must include the following information for each study:

- Name of data extractors and date of data extraction

- Confirmation that the study was eligible to be included in the review.

- All data extracted from each study for the reported systematic review and/or meta-analysis that would be needed to replicate your analyses.

- If data or supporting information were obtained from another source (e.g. correspondence with the author of the original research article), please provide the source of data and dates on which the data/information were obtained by your research group.

- If applicable for your analysis, a table showing the completed risk of bias and quality/certainty assessments for each study or outcome.  Please ensure this is provided for each domain or parameter assessed. For example, if you used the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials, provide answers to each of the signalling questions for each study. If you used GRADE to assess certainty of evidence, provide judgements about each of the quality of evidence factor. This should be provided for each outcome.

- An explanation of how missing data were handled.

This information can be included in the main text, supplementary information, or relevant data repository. Please note that providing these underlying data is a requirement for publication in this journal, and if these data are not provided your manuscript might be rejected.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->

Key Review Criteria Required for Acceptance?

As you describe the new analyses required for acceptance, please consider the following:

Methods

-Are the objectives of the study clearly articulated with a clear testable hypothesis stated?

-Is the study design appropriate to address the stated objectives?

-Is the population clearly described and appropriate for the hypothesis being tested?

-Is the sample size sufficient to ensure adequate power to address the hypothesis being tested?

-Were correct statistical analysis used to support conclusions?

-Are there concerns about ethical or regulatory requirements being met?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

Results

-Does the analysis presented match the analysis plan?

-Are the results clearly and completely presented?

-Are the figures (Tables, Images) of sufficient quality for clarity?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

Conclusions

-Are the conclusions supported by the data presented?

-Are the limitations of analysis clearly described?

-Do the authors discuss how these data can be helpful to advance our understanding of the topic under study?

-Is public health relevance addressed?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

Editorial and Data Presentation Modifications?

Use this section for editorial suggestions as well as relatively minor modifications of existing data that would enhance clarity. If the only modifications needed are minor and/or editorial, you may wish to recommend “Minor Revision” or “Accept”.

Reviewer #2: in discussion section expand on why attitudes were the least studied domain?

**********

Summary and General Comments

Use this section to provide overall comments, discuss strengths/weaknesses of the study, novelty, significance, general execution and scholarship. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. If requesting major revision, please articulate the new experiments that are needed.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .

Reviewer #2: No

-->

Figure resubmission:

While revising your submission, we strongly recommend that you use PLOS’s NAAS tool (https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis) to test your figure files. NAAS can convert your figure files to the TIFF file type and meet basic requirements (such as print size, resolution), or provide you with a report on issues that do not meet our requirements and that NAAS cannot fix.

--> After uploading your figures to PLOS’s NAAS tool - https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis, NAAS will process the files provided and display the results in the "Uploaded Files" section of the page as the processing is complete. If the uploaded figures meet our requirements (or NAAS is able to fix the files to meet our requirements), the figure will be marked as "fixed" above. If NAAS is unable to fix the files, a red "failed" label will appear above. When NAAS has confirmed that the figure files meet our requirements, please download the file via the download option, and include these NAAS processed figure files when submitting your revised manuscript.-->

Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that authors of applicable studies deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

-->PNTD-D-25-00848R2-->

Scoping review of knowledge, attitude, and practice to zoonotic diseases among abattoir workers and residents in proximity to abattoirs in low-middle income countries

-->PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases-->--> -->-->Dear Dr. Patricia Uche Ogbo,-->

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases's publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a further revised version of the manuscript.

Please submit your revised manuscript by  07/02/2026 If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosntds@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pntd/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

* A letter that responds to each editorial comment. You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers '. This file does not need to include responses to any formatting updates and technical items listed in the 'Journal Requirements' section below.

* A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes '.

* An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript '.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, competing interests statement, or data availability statement, please make these updates within the submission form at the time of resubmission. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pikka Jokelainen, DVM, MPG, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Annapaola Rizzoli

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

-->

Shaden Kamhawi

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-4304-636XX

Paul Brindley

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-1765-0002

-->

Additional Editor Comments:

Editorial comments: All major comments have been considered. Minor language checking and editing is still needed, please see comments below for guidance.

Please check the use of singular vs plural for ‘attitudes’ and ‘practices’ – typically both should be in plural throughout the text.

In Table 1, the first column is indicated to tell Name of first author and year of publication, but it includes ‘et al.’ as well as name of all authors when there was two authors.

Use of capital first letters needs further check. Why currently capital letter for Pleuropneumonia, why not for cysticercosis? Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is written with capital letters for both ‘Crimean’ and ‘Congo’, and with hyphen, by e.g. WHO (Table 1, Table 2).

Toxoplasma gondii needs to be written with capital first letter for genus name, and Italics for both genus and species name, in both text and Table 1.

In Table 2, please check and clarify, these two sentences leave confusion: “292 (97.3%) participants of 300 were found to consume raw meat. 225 (75%) had eaten or consumed raw meat”

Consider and check the use of abbreviations. Are e.g. SH-worker and bTB needed? Currently bTB is explained two times.

In list of included studies, word ’applicable’ is misspelled. Is S/N 4. included? There is no remark for that one. Abbreviation “S/N” is not explained in the document.

American and British spelling are currently mixed (e.g. minimize; behaviour), please check for consistent style.

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

-->

1) We have noticed that you have uploaded Supporting Information files, but you have not included a list of legends. Please add a full list of legends for your Supporting Information files after the references list.

2) As required by our policy on Data Availability, please ensure your manuscript or supplementary information includes the following:

- A numbered table of all studies identified in the literature search, including those that were excluded from the analyses.

- For every excluded study, the table should list the reason(s) for exclusion.

- If any of the included studies are unpublished, include a link (URL) to the primary source or detailed information about how the content can be accessed.

- A table of all data extracted from the primary research sources for the systematic review and/or meta-analysis. The table must include the following information for each study:

- Name of data extractors and date of data extraction

- Confirmation that the study was eligible to be included in the review.

- All data extracted from each study for the reported systematic review and/or meta-analysis that would be needed to replicate your analyses.

- If data or supporting information were obtained from another source (e.g. correspondence with the author of the original research article), please provide the source of data and dates on which the data/information were obtained by your research group.

- If applicable for your analysis, a table showing the completed risk of bias and quality/certainty assessments for each study or outcome.  Please ensure this is provided for each domain or parameter assessed. For example, if you used the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials, provide answers to each of the signalling questions for each study. If you used GRADE to assess certainty of evidence, provide judgements about each of the quality of evidence factor. This should be provided for each outcome.

- An explanation of how missing data were handled.

This information can be included in the main text, supplementary information, or relevant data repository. Please note that providing these underlying data is a requirement for publication in this journal, and if these data are not provided your manuscript might be rejected.

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Figure resubmission:

While revising your submission, we strongly recommend that you use PLOS’s NAAS tool (https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis) to test your figure files. NAAS can convert your figure files to the TIFF file type and meet basic requirements (such as print size, resolution), or provide you with a report on issues that do not meet our requirements and that NAAS cannot fix.

-->  -->After uploading your figures to PLOS’s NAAS tool - https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis, NAAS will process the files provided and display the results in the "Uploaded Files" section of the page as the processing is complete. If the uploaded figures meet our requirements (or NAAS is able to fix the files to meet our requirements), the figure will be marked as "fixed" above. If NAAS is unable to fix the files, a red "failed" label will appear above. When NAAS has confirmed that the figure files meet our requirements, please download the file via the download option, and include these NAAS processed figure files when submitting your revised manuscript.-->-->

Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that authors of applicable studies deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

Dear Patricia Uche Ogbo,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Scoping review of knowledge, attitudes, and practices to zoonotic diseases among abattoir workers and residents in proximity to abattoirs in low-middle income countries' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow up email. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests.

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us now if you or your institution is planning to press release the article. All press must be co-ordinated with PLOS.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Best regards,

Pikka Jokelainen, DVM, MPG, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Annapaola Rizzoli

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Shaden Kamhawi

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-4304-636XX

Paul Brindley

co-Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

orcid.org/0000-0003-1765-0002

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