Ebola a stark reminder of link between health of humans, animals, environment

Emily Caldwell at the Ohio State University News Room: For many, global public health seems like an abstract and distant problem – until the Ebola virus is diagnosed among people in our midst. Though no one would call the Ebola pandemic a good thing, it has presented an opportunity for scientists to alert the public about the dire need to halt the spread of infectious diseases, especially in developing and densely populated areas of the world.

“What often seems like an abstract notion becomes very concrete when a deadly virus previously contained in Western Africa infects people on American soil,” said Wondwossen Gebreyes, professor of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University. “It does create a certain sense of urgency and awareness that this world is much smaller than we think.”

Gebreyes is the lead author of an article published in the Nov. 13, 2014, issue of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases that makes the case for accelerating efforts to put “One Health” into action. One Health refers to a strategy to more fully understand and address the links between animal health, human health and the environment.

The paper emphasizes the danger of zoonotic infections – those transmitted from animals to humans – and the staggering damage they do, especially in developing nations that lack a variety of resources. These diseases don’t just kill people, but they cause tremendous economic harm in a variety of ways: killing livestock, reducing the ranks of qualified health and education providers, creating political unrest and stopping development in its tracks.

There is an urgent need for progress. Approximately 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases are those transmitted from animals to humans, and the world is on pace to experience at least one deadly disease outbreak each year.

...“To attain a true One Health approach, we need broad recognition of the interconnectivity among the health of humans, domestic or wild animals and the environment, which are all closely linked by the pathogens that they share,” he said....