Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) is a highly transmissible and usually mild disease that affects wild birds such as geese, swans, seagulls, shorebirds, and also domestic birds such as chickens and turkeys.
(CDC and NIAID)
The absence of norms defining the common good and the insufficient place of scientific arguments in the democratic debate weaken the capacity of liberalism to face global threats.
Financial support for science and research in Nigeria remains pathetic. This has led to the deterioration in the quantity and quality of trained virologists at universities.
There are numerous ways for antibiotic-resistant microbes to enter the human body.
(Biorender)
If surveillance focuses only on diseases that have already emerged, we’ll remain behind the curve. Better prediction of future pandemics will need to integrate animal, planetary and human health.
The strain of H5N1 bird flu identified in Canada, the United States and Europe can cause severe disease and high mortality in domestic poultry.
(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Avian influenza virus — or bird flu — can infect domestic poultry such as chickens and turkeys, as well as wild birds. The H5N1 strain has been identified in Canada.
The sticky biofilms that form on microplastics can harbor disease-causing pathogens and help them spread.
Tunatura/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Karen Shapiro, University of California, Davis and Emma Zhang, University of California, Davis
Normally land-bound pathogens that cause deadly diseases for both humans and animals can cling to microplastics and end up in your seafood.
COVID-19 will not be the last infectious disease event of our time. We need to prepare for the next challenge with evidence and knowledge.
(Shutterstock)
Before COVID-19, clean water, antibiotics and vaccines had made us complacent about infectious disease. Infection control can no longer be taken for granted. We must be prepared for future pandemics.
A hippopotamus heads back into its enclosure at the Antwerp Zoo.
(Shutterstock)
COVID-19 has been found in wild, captive and domesticated animals. To understand and combat the disease, a One Health approach that considers human, animal and environmental factors is essential.
There is only ‘one health’ — the health of all living organisms in a global ecosystem that, when rapidly altered and imbalanced, puts us all at risk for future pandemics.
(Canva)
One Health recognizes the interrelations between the health of humans, other animals, and their shared environments. It should be integrated in the international treaty on pandemics.
Disturbing the habitats of horseshoe bats, like these in Borneo, increases the risk of virus spillover.
Mike Prince/Flickr
How can nations prevent more pandemics like COVID-19? One priority is reducing the risk of diseases’ jumping from animals to humans. And that means understanding how human actions fuel that risk.
Albanian health department workers, wearing protective suits, collect chickens, in the village of Peze Helmes some 20 km from the capital Tirana, 23 March 2006, after the second case of H5N1 bird flu was discovered in Albania.
Gent Shkullaku / AFP
Ever since the 2001 SARS outbreak and H5N1 avian flu in 2003, we’ve developed tools to monitor diseases that transmitted from animals to humans. But what does a large-scale roll-out entail?
The EUV-SK1, developed by One Health Medical Technologies with subject matter experts from the University of Saskatchewan.
(RMD Engineering, Inc.)
How a veterinarian and a law professor joined a multidisciplinary team to help produce a made-in-Saskatchewan emergency-use ventilator during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Liz Minchin, The Conversation and Molly Glassey, The Conversation
Watch two of Australia and New Zealand’s top vaccine and virus experts answering questions about COVID-19. This was filmed at a Conversation reader event with Avid Reader bookshop.
Illicit endangered wildlife trade in Möng La, Shan, Myanmar.
Dan Bennett/Wikimedia
To better anticipate and manage the emergence of new pandemics, a paradigm shift is needed to take into account the complex interactions between human health, animal health, the environment and the economy.
Forests provide an essential buffer between people and wildlife — and the viruses they carry. Global agriculture is destroying forests, harming biodiversity and may be putting human life at risk.
A COVID-19-type pandemic had long been predicted, but our warnings weren’t heeded. We need to start rethinking our approach to health now – even in countries like New Zealand.
Industrial animal agriculture in our own backyard could very well be the cause of the next pandemic.
(Unsplash)
In the real world, new diseases emerge from complex environments. To learn more about how, scientists set up whole artificial ecosystems in the lab, instead of focusing on just one factor at a time.