Veterinary Public Health Journal | Issue #17
The global threat of infectious diseases outbreaks As a public health emergency, coronavirus outbreak highlights need to address threats to ecosystem and wildlife. Veterinary medicine, along with other sciences, is actively involved in the complex health challenges of climate changes that humanity is facing. The emerging and re-emerging zoonoses, as well as the consequences of the so called neglected and not sufficiently researched diseases, especially in the wild animals, have resulted with serious health consequences for the people, animals, the environment, and also socioeconomic problems. This article highlights the importance of the veterinary medicine for an active involvement of the health and welfare of wild fauna. In the newly created conditions by the climate change, wildlife diseases occur with more intensity, morbidity, mortality, and new biological characteristics which mean high risk for public health. The veterinary medicine makes efforts to follow the continual changes through intense monitoring, emphasizing the need for implementation of the concept One Health and cooperation among all relevant disciplines, especially human medicine.
WILDLIFE PATHOGENS WITH ZOONOTIC POTENTIAL. Wild animals are an important reservoir of pathogenic microorganisms with zoonotic potential, which transmission is conducted by the free movement of the wild animals, as well as the international trade with wild animals and their products. The infectious diseases, around 60% of which are zoonotic, make a quarter of causes of death in humans. Most of them (>70%) are of wild animal origin, which shows a serious threat. (P.Lanfranchi et al., 2003, OIE, 2010).
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that can cause disease. Human diseases caused by wildlife zoonotic pathogens that became important in the past 60 years, includes: AIDS, Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Avian influenza, West Nile Virus, Leishmaniasis, Brucellosis, Tuberculosis, Ebola virus, Leptospirosis, Trichinellosis, Hanta Viruses etc. These outbreaks have served as examples of the potential seriousness of emerging zoonotic diseases to public health. For an example, AIDS viruses has adapted to people through genetic mutation and now are being transmitted between people, independent of their original source. (OIE, 2010) Currently, there is an outbreak of COVID-19 infections with scientific evidence that the virus has an animal origin. This emerging disease has pandemic potential with rapid geographic spread. Further research is needed to identify the source and the role of an animal reservoir in this disease. (OIE, 2020) Because of the concerns about COVID-19 transmission from wild animals to people and for better understanding the ecology of the disease, two species are suspsected for zoonotic transfer. Bats (Rhinolophus affinis) and Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) contains coronaviruses similar to SARS-COV-2, although there are other species that are undersampled. This knowledge could help scientists to better understand the natural evolutionary process and how a virus with animal origin jumped species boundaries to infect humans. (Andersen et al., 2020)
Pathogens in wild animals may affect human health, animal health and wildlife ANTHROPOGENIC FACTOR – population. Wild animals can be direct or MAIN DRIVER FOR EMERGING indirect sources of infection for people DISEASES. VetPubHealth Journal ISSUE 17
IVSA Standing Committe on One Health
April 2020
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