6 Aug 2021
Zoonotic threats must be properly integrated into global health security planning, say authors of Royal Society of Medicine paper.
James Westgate
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Image: Evgeniya_St / Adobe Stock.
More needs to be done to integrate surveillance of small animal zoonotic disease, according to global health practitioners writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
The authors of the paper – from the Conflict and Health Research Group, King’s College London – say that zoonotic diseases pose the greatest health security threat to human and animal populations alike.
They also argue that surveillance of zoonotic diseases must be integrated into health security intelligence systems, if future pandemics are to be handled effectively.
Lead author Gemma Bowsher said: “Companion, zoo and shelter animals exist in close proximity to human populations, and with limited monitoring in place, remain a potentially high-risk disease reservoir for zoonoses.” She added: “Domesticated animals in high-income countries are as much a threat as the oft-cited wildlife in wet markets or equatorial rainforests.”
Shelter animals in particular are high-risk populations, given their high levels of stress and susceptibility to infectious pathogens.
The researchers point to a 2017 outbreak of H7N2 bird flu in New York’s cat shelters as an example of new transmission pathways across a large population of more than 300 animals and into people. Previously identified in the city’s poultry markets, the virus had not been known to cross over into cats prior to this event.
Animals that die in zoos in the UK, unlike the US, do not undergo mandatory necropsy, with researchers arguing this is missing a crucial opportunity to detect potential and confirmed disease present in animal populations.
Researchers say that the anticipation and early detection of potential zoonotic events should be a first order objective for any developing health security agenda in both global and domestic settings.
They also add that veterinary and medical communities “working in silos” is obstructing the development of an effective health security research agenda.
Dr Bowsher added: “Ignoring the potential for animal infections to produce and propagate human disease is a failure of health security. Effective future epi-pandemic preparedness demands improved systems for ‘species neutral’ health security intelligence.”
The full text of the paper was published Friday 6 August.
