Prioritizing Zoonoses: A Proposed One Health Tool for Collaborative Decision-Making

Abstract

Emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases pose a threat to both humans and animals. This common threat is an opportunity for human and animal health agencies to coordinate across sectors in a more effective response to zoonotic diseases. An initial step in the collaborative process is identification of diseases or pathogens of greatest concern so that limited financial and personnel resources can be effectively focused. Unfortunately, in many countries where zoonotic diseases pose the greatest risk, surveillance information that clearly defines burden of disease is not available. We have created a semi-quantitative tool for prioritizing zoonoses in the absence of comprehensive prevalence data. Our tool requires that human and animal health agency representatives jointly identify criteria (e.g., pandemic potential, human morbidity or mortality, economic impact) that are locally appropriate for defining a disease as being of concern. The outcome of this process is a ranked disease list that both human and animal sectors can support for collaborative surveillance, laboratory capacity enhancement, or other identified activities. The tool is described in a five-step process and its utility is demonstrated for the reader.

Viral and vector zoonotic exploitation of a homo-sociome memetic complex

“…Besides these selected examples of NVZ, additional salient representatives could have included Rift Valley fever, the rodent-associated zoonoses such as the hantaviruses, hepatitis E virus, tick-borne encephalitis and multiple others. Nevertheless, regardless of pathogen or vector, consideration of all of the NVZ (as well as other non-viral agents) in a One Health context is the best option for a community-based approach to the long-term detection of, response to and mitigation of zoonoses as an integrated unit, rather than as an individual agent or disease [55]. Finally, beyond the classical microbiological and biomedical aspects of human, veterinary and conservation medicine, the basic underpinnings to these neglected entities are often more deeply rooted in a complex suite of anthropological, cultural, religious and social factors, which also may persist or change abruptly over time as the agents and vectors in kind.…”

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Its Partners’ Contributions to Global Health Security

“…Zoonoses are responsible for an estimated >2 billion human illnesses and 2 million human deaths annually ( 36 ). Under GHSA, many countries are undertaking efforts to identify and prioritize zoonotic diseases of greatest national concern through a One Health approach (i.e., linking human, environmental, and animal health) ( 37 ). This approach helps a country focus limited resources for surveillance, laboratory capacity building, outbreak response, and prevention and control efforts and helps to enhance communication, collaboration, and engagement across critical sectors of government.…”

Priorización de enfermedades virales zoonóticas en la interfaz de cerdos silvestres, cerdos domésticos y seres humanos

“…oie.int/es/sanidad-animal-en-el-mundo/wahiswild-interface/), y en los sistemas de indexación y resúmenes (SIRES) Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar y PubMed (los cuales contenían información para la construcción de la matriz de categorías y criterios de priorización), de artículos indexados entre 1977 y 2015, y usando las palabras clave "priorización", "cerdos silvestres" y "enfermedades virales" en inglés y en español, se indagó sobre las enfermedades zoonóticas y se elaboró una lista de nueve en las cuales los cerdos silvestres están involucrados como huéspedes o reservorios. La priorización semicuantitativa basada en la evidencia de las enfermedades virales se hizo según Humblet,et al (8), Logan, et al (5), y Cito, et al (9), y se confrontó la información obtenida sobre las enfermedades zoonóticas de importancia a nivel internacional para detectar las más comunes.…”

“…Además de la aparición de agentes patógenos zoonóticos, se estima que 20 % de la morbimortalidad de todas las enfermedades humanas en los países menos desarrollados es atribuible a las zoonosis endémicas (7). En los países en desarrollo, 13 zoonosis se consideran como las de mayor impacto en los ganaderos pobres, con el agravante de que las enfermedades zoonóticas son un problema de salud pública, y se estima que son responsables de 2,7 millones de muertes y 2,4 millones de casos de enfermedad en seres humanos cada año; la mayoría de estas enfermedades también tienen efectos negativos sobre la producción ganadera (5 …”