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Emerging infectious diseases, biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic environmental change are interconnected crises with massive social and ecological costs. In this Review, we discuss how pathogens and parasites are responding to global change, and the implications for pandemic prevention and biodiversity conservation. Ecological and evolutionary principles help to explain why both pandemics and wildlife die-offs are becoming more common; why land-use change and biodiversity loss are often followed by an increase in zoonotic and vector-borne diseases; and why some species, such as bats, host so many emerging pathogens. To prevent the next pandemic, scientists should focus on monitoring and limiting the spread of a handful of high-risk viruses, especially at key interfaces such as farms and live-animal markets. But to address the much broader set of infectious disease risks associated with the Anthropocene, decision-makers will need to develop comprehensive strategies that include pathogen surveillance across species and ecosystems; conservation-based interventions to reduce human–animal contact and protect wildlife health; health system strengthening; and global improvements in epidemic preparedness and response. Scientists can contribute to these efforts by filling global gaps in disease data, and by expanding the evidence base for disease–driver relationships and ecological interventions.
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A comprehensive approach to integrated one health surveillance and response
A comprehensive approach to integrated one health surveillance and responseSurveillance data plays a crucial role in understanding and responding to emerging infectious diseases; here, we learn why adopting a One Health surveillance approach to EIDs can help to protect human, animal, and environmental health. Over 75% of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) affecting humans are zoonotic diseases with animal hosts, which can be transmitted by waterborne, foodborne, vector-borne, or air-borne pathways. (7) Early detection is important and allows for a rapid response through preventive and control measures. However, early detection of EIDs is hindered by several obstacles, such as climate change, which can alter habitats, leading to shifts in the distribution of disease- carrying vectors like mosquitoes and ticks. This can result in diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and Lyme disease becoming more common in areas with established transmission or spreading to new areas entirely. (4) Environmental changes such as deforestation and urbanization disrupt ecosystems, increasing the likelihood of zoonotic disease spillover from wildlife to humans. In addition to working at the interface of these changes, detection and tracking of EIDs also requires sharing and standardization of complex data and integrating processes across different regions and health systems.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2200299
- PAR ID:
- 10528303
- Publisher / Repository:
- Open Access Government
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Open Access Government
- Volume:
- 43
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2516-3817
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 50 to 51
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Public health disease surveillance One Health
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Zoonotic and vector-borne infectious diseases are among the most direct human health consequences of biodiversity change. The COVID-19 pandemic increased health policymakers’ attention on the links between ecological degradation and disease, and sparked discussions around nature-based interventions to mitigate zoonotic emergence and epidemics. Yet, although disease ecology provides an increasingly granular knowledge of wildlife disease in changing ecosystems, we still have a poor understanding of the net consequences for human disease. Here, we argue that a renewed focus on wildlife-borne diseases as complex socio-ecological systems—a‘people and nature’paradigm—is needed to identify local interventions and transformative system-wide changes that could reduce human disease burden. We discuss longstanding scientific narratives of human involvement in zoonotic disease systems, which have largely framed people as ecological disruptors, and discuss three emerging research areas that provide wider system perspectives: how anthropogenic ecosystems construct new niches for infectious disease, feedbacks between disease, biodiversity and social vulnerability and the role of human-to-animal pathogen transmission (‘spillback’) in zoonotic disease systems. We conclude by discussing new opportunities to better understand the predictability of human disease outcomes from biodiversity change and to integrate ecological drivers of disease into health intervention design and evaluation. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’.more » « less
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The accelerating pace of emerging zoonotic diseases in the twenty-first century has motivated cross-disciplinary collaboration on One Health approaches, combining microbiology, veterinary and environmental sciences, and epidemiology for outbreak prevention and mitigation. Such outbreaks are often caused by spillovers attributed to human activities that encroach on wildlife habitats and ecosystems, such as land use change, industrialized food production, urbanization and animal trade. While the origin of anthropogenic effects on animal ecology and biogeography can be traced to the Late Pleistocene, the archaeological record—a long-term archive of human–animal–environmental interactions—has largely been untapped in these One Health approaches, thus limiting our understanding of these dynamics over time. In this review, we examine how humans, as niche constructors, have facilitated new host species and ‘disease-scapes’ from the Late Pleistocene to the Anthropocene, by viewing zooarchaeological, bioarchaeological and palaeoecological data with a One Health perspective. We also highlight how new biomolecular tools and advances in the ‘-omics’ can be holistically coupled with archaeological and palaeoecological reconstructions in the service of studying zoonotic disease emergence and re-emergence.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.56367/OAG-043-10923
