Smallholder pig producer family in Kiboga, Uganda (photo credit: ILRI/Danilo Pezo).

‘Scientists in Kenya have launched research of a vaccine to be used against African swine fever. The study is still at an early stage where scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are identifying antigens and best-bet delivery systems to be used.

‘“Research in this area, with the ultimate goal of generating resistant and productive domestic pigs, is just beginning,” said ILRI molecular biologist Dr Richard Bishop.

‘He said that ILRI has just been awarded major funding from BMZ for vaccine development in collaboration with FLI (Riems) Germany to help save the global pig industry that is worth $150 billion.

‘Africa-wide economic impacts of swine fever are hard to quantify due to a dearth of disease recording, especially as this infection rapidly turns lethal in pig herds and active surveillance for the infection is rare. The prevalence of the disease has thwarted investment in the smallholder pig sector.

‘The disease is still emerging in Africa and in the last 20 years, it has spread to parts of West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius and most recently (in 2011) to Chad from Cameroon.

In Uganda, pig numbers have increased to four million today and continue to rise from 100,000 in the 1970s and pork consumption is now close to that of beef.

‘There were 20 recorded outbreaks of African swine fever in Uganda in 2010 alone.

‘“This is an underestimate due to a difficulty in diagnosing the disease and under-reporting of livestock diseases,” Bishop said.

‘Although the absolute total number of pigs kept in Africa remains relatively small (less than 50 million), pig keeping is very profitable for many of Africa’s rural poor, providing a flexible means of generating an income in the right environments. . . . .’

Read the whole article in the Daily Nation/Xinhua: Kenyan experts search for swine fever vaccine, 12 May 2013.

Filed under: Africa, Animal Health, ASF, Asia, Biotech, Chad, Disease Control, Emerging Diseases, ILRI, Kenya, PA, Pigs, Project, Uganda Tagged: Cameroon, Daily Nation (Kenya), Richard Bishop, Xinhua

Camels cover dozens of kilometres in search of water; average distances to watering points in the outskirts of Marsabit and Moyale, in the upper east corner of Kenya, run into dozens of kilometres (photo by Ann Weru/IRIN www.irinnews.org).

‘Camels are known for their ability to travel long distances across the desert without water.

‘But they’re also becoming an increasingly important source of milk for people in drought-prone regions. That includes East African countries like Kenya, where camel numbers have skyrocketed over the past few decades.

‘But introducing camels—or any species—to a new region, could mean bringing in new diseases.

‘The St. Louis Zoo has been studying camel diseases in Kenya to help assess their risks.’

A couple of years ago, Margaret Kinnaird, the executive director of the Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya ‘began a project on camel health with wildlife veterinarian Sharon Deem, who directs the Institute for Conservation Medicine at the Saint Louis Zoo.

Camels may have some diseases that, as the human population reaches for camel milk, these diseases could be passed to them,” Deem says.

Deem says a growing number of Kenyans are drinking camel milk—most of it unpasteurized. “These are estimates, but we really believe that up to 10 percent of Kenya’s 40 million people—so we’re talking four million people—probably drink unpasteurized camel milk,” Deem says.

Camels aren’t native to Kenya. But Margaret Kinnaird estimates that over the past 30 years, their number has grown to something on the order of three million animals. . . .

‘Amos Omore of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi says unlike cattle and goats, camels can keep producing substantial quantities of milk under drought conditions—which climate scientists predict will become more severe and frequent in Kenya the future.

So I would imagine that given climate change, the role of camels is bound to be even more important than it has been before for those who live in these areas,” Omore says.

‘Sharon Deem says with camels becoming more common in Kenya—and significant as a source of nutrition—it’s critical to find out what diseases they might be spreading. . . .

‘Deem says the testing didn’t turn up much brucellosis or trypanosomiasis. But almost a third of the camels—and more than half the ticks—tested positive for Q fever, a bacterial disease that can be fatal in humans. “So we really feel that Q fever in camels could be very important in this region,” Deem says.

‘Deem says the next step will be to take a closer look at Q fever and how it’s affecting livestock, people, and wildlife. She also wants to keep working with Kenyan ranchers on what she calls “camel 101”—what they can do to keep their camels healthy.’

Read the whole article, and listen to the podcast, at St Louis Public Radio: Why is the Saint Louis Zoo tackling camel diseases in Kenya?, 10 May 2013.

Filed under: Animal Diseases, Camels, Dairying, Disease Control, East Africa, Health (human), ILRI, Interview, Kenya, MarketOpps, Pastoralism, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Amos Omore, Q fever, St Louis Public Radio

Faith Kivuti with her mother milking a cow in Kenya (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins).

A vaccine to protect cattle against a lethal disease known as East Coast fever has been launched in Kenya, where Kenya Livestock Development Minister Mohammed Kuti says the development ‘is a big relief to livestock farmers in East, Central and Southern Africa where about 1.1 million cattle are lost to the disease every year.

The vaccine was developed jointly by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the International Livestock Research Institute, Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Global Alliance for Livestock and Veterinary Medicine.

‘Dr Kuti said the realisation of the vaccine is a milestone in the control of livestock diseases in Africa particularly livestock keepers in Kenya. . . .

‘In a speech read on his behalf by the Director of Veterinary Services, Dr Peter Maina Ithondeka, Kuti said the disease was a major constraint preventing farmers from keeping improved breeds in areas where it is rampant.

‘He said the disease would kill close to 100 per cent of the exotic dairy cattle. It is also a major killer of other varieties kept by local pastoralists. . . .

‘“The vaccine is now a boost on agricultural production through marketing, value-addition and agri-business will improve the livelihoods of Kenyans and create wealth,” he said.

‘Ithondeka said the disease endangered 10 million animals in sub-Saharan Africa and that drugs used to treat the disease are very expensive — above the reach or ordinary farmers. . . .

‘Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (Kenfap) lauded institutions that carried out tests and developed the vaccine. . . .

Kuti said Vision 2030 recognises livestock development as a key player in national development and a major component of the wider agricultural sector.’

Read the whole article by Osinde Obare at Standard Digital (Kenya): Reprieve to pastoralists as new vaccine for animal fever unveiled, 9 Dec 2012.

Filed under: Animal Diseases, Animal Health, Biotech, Cattle, Central Africa, Disease Control, East Africa, ECF, ILRI, Kenya, Launch, PA, Southern Africa, Vaccines Tagged: FAO, GALVmed, KARI, Mohammed Kuti, Standard Digital

Together with regional stakeholders, the CGIAR program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCFAS – http://ccafs.cgiar.org/) generated so-called “socio-economic scenarios”.  These scenarios aim to explore key regional socio-economic and governance uncertainties for food security, environment and livelihoods through integrated qualitative-quantitative descriptions of plausible futures to 2030. The CCAFS vision has been to use these scenarios with regional, national and local actors for strategic planning. They hope to explore the feasibility of strategies, technologies and policies toward improved food security, environments and livelihoods under different socio-economic and governance conditions.

Problems around diseases, environmental change and food insecurity for vulnerable rural communities in the developing world go hand in hand. So, too, do the impacts of government policies and strategies of non-state actors focusing on health care and food. Both issues face many similar future uncertainties – both of an economic and political nature (e.g. migration, funds for treatment, conflicts, uneven development etc.) as well as biophysical change (e.g. climate change, ecosystem degradation), with different but related impacts. These scenarios with their regional food security focus are therefore very well suited for the exploration of possible futures of vector-borne diseases in Eastern Africa.

In a true collaborative effort, CCAFS and the Healthy Futures project organised a stakeholder workshop to adapt CCAFS storylines to the disease context.  They were financially supported by the CGIAR program on agriculture for nutrition and health.

On 6th November 2012, a group of experts of different disciplines were brought together at the ILRI campus in Nairobi (Kenya) to look at potential futures of vector-borne diseases in East Africa. The participants discussed future scenarios of socio-economic development in the region and its implications for the spread and control of malaria, schistosomiasis and Rift Valley Fever. The workshop developed an inventory of interventions to tackle the diseases – such as the analysis of rainfall information through mobile phone networks as an early warning system for Malaria, including disease risks in livestock insurance programs, the introduction of non-susceptible animals and the pairing of water-related disease mitigation policies with irrigation schemes.

Then, the participants discussed key uncertainties for the diseases, many of which related to food insecurity, agricultural livelihoods and environmental change – linking them strongly to the CCAFS scenarios. Examples are the uncertain future of pastoralists and the double-edged link between poverty (fewer livestock but less capacity to cope) and Rift Valley Fever. Similarly, better regional integration in East Africa might improve food trade but also allow for more opportunities for disease transmission across borders.

In a next step the qualitative assessments will be quantified through the use of integrated models.  Both the qualitative and quantitative information will finally feed into the vulnerability assessments and decision support system.

Story by: An Notenbaert

Filed under: Agri-Health, Climate Change, CRP4, Disease Control, East Africa, Emerging Diseases, Environment, Food security, Kenya, RVF, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: a4nh, CCAFS

On 4 Nov 2012, an ILRI delegation of 28 visited the village of Araipura, in the Karnal District in the Indian state of Haryana, where they held discussions with dairy farm families. The ILRI management team and board of trustees also visited the National Dairy Research Institute. (Photo credit: ILRI)

‘Operation Flood in Gujarat is a lesson on how to connect the small farmers with the market, a top official from global research body International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) said Wednesday.

Operation Flood in Gujarat is one of the lessons we have learnt from India. The country can teach the world how to connect the small farmers with the market so that they can increase their incomes and quality of life,” ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith told reporters here.

‘The demand for livestock products is rising rapidly in India as well as globally and the country has the potential to rise up to meet this challenge, he added.

‘Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Deputy Director General (Animal Science) K M L Pathak said India can seek ILRI’s help in developing its capacity to treat Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR).

‘PPR, also known as goat plague, is a highly contagious viral disease affecting goats and sheep in Africa, Middle-East and the Indian subcontinent.’

Renowned agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan, father of India’s Green Revolution, inaugurated an all-day ILRI-ICAR Partnership Dialogue in New Delhi yesterday (7 Nov 2012), where these remarks were made. Swaminathan said that said that conservation of biodiversity and genetic resources in livestock is the foremost issue which needs to be addressed in view of the continuous threats and went on to recommend:

Development of an integrated crop livestock farming system and adoption of naturally bio-fortified foods for enhancing nutritional status of the Indian population. . . .’

Read the whole article at Zee News/Press Trust of India: India can teach world how to connect farmer with market, 7 Nov 2012.

Filed under: Crop-Livestock, Directorate, Event, ILRI, India, Markets, PA, Partnerships, PPR, South Asia Tagged: ILRI-ICAR Partnership Dialogue, Jimmy Smith, MS Swaminathan, Zee News/Press Trust of India

Customers at a milk bar in Ndumbuini in Kabete, Nairobi  (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

Mark Tran in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog warns us this week not to keep chickens under our beds. On the other hand, he infers, chicken bought on the street in poor countries may be safer to eat than that from the supermarket. Tran is reporting on a new in-depth study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of livestock keeping in urban areas of Nigeria and Kenya. That study found that while living among animals in crowded urban environments does have risks for human health, ‘banning urban livestock or getting rid of markets can often do more harm than good’.

‘As more people leave the countryside for the city in the developing world, many continue to rely on agriculture for a living’, Tran reports.’ At least 800 million people in cities in poor countries practise urban agriculture, from growing vegetables to keeping animals—from chickens to camels—often in close confinement in densely populated areas.

‘The close proximity of animals and humans can pose health risks. Zoonoses—diseases transmitted between animals and humans—are a health problem that particularly affects the poor in developing countries. New research from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) found that zoonoses and diseases recently emerged from animals (swine flu, bird flu, Sars) make up a quarter of infectious diseases in developing countries, compared with just 0.7% in rich countries.

Researchers, however, warn that a draconian approach to urban livestock and informal markets—where traders are unlicensed and pay no tax, and which lack health and safety rules—can end up doing more harm than good. Outright bans on livestock in urban areas or informal markets is not the answer, they say.

Getting rid of informal markets is impossible”, says Delia Grace, a food safety specialist with ILRI, who is based in Nairobi but was in London last week. “It forces trading to go underground. In Kampala [Uganda], we found traders who were harassed adopted less good practices, which is no surprise as they have to pay more attention to evading authorities than to hygiene.”. . .

ILRI experts said studies in east Africa, north-east India and Vietnam came to the surprising conclusion that food sold in formal markets (supermarkets), though commonly perceived to be safer, may have lower compliance with standards than informally marketed food. . . .

‘In Bangladesh, where poor people often keep chickens under the bed in cramped conditions, one appropriate response would be to suggest they be kept in a wicker cage at a distance from the bed, or in a shed close to home. Other simple approaches that have led to improvements in food safety in Kenya and India (milk), and Nigeria (meat) include the use of wide-necked vessels for milk that are easy to clean, tests for food safety that can be applied by consumers and traders (lactometers to check for added water), and peer pressure (the desire to be seen as a good parent). . . .’

Delia Grace is a veterinary epidemiologist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya, leader of a disease component of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, and a partner with Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa. Her research involves developing and managing risk-based approaches to animal and animal-human diseases. Before joining ILRI as a postdoctoral scientist, Grace worked in community-based animal health programs in Asia and East and West Africa. Listen to Grace narrate a 3-minute photofilm on livestock food safety in Nairobi: Dying for Meat.

Read the whole article by Mark Tran in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog How to stop zoonoses spreading—don’t keep chickens under the bed, 12 Oct 2012.

Read more about the ILRI study, with links to an ILRI Factsheet on Urban Agriculture and Zoonoses in Nairobi and papers published in a special issues of Tropical Animal Health and Production, on the ILRI News Blog: Livestock in the city: New study of ‘farm animals’ raised in African cities yields surprising results, 15 Oct 2012.

Filed under: Animal Diseases, Article, Bangladesh, CRP4, Disease Control, Emerging Diseases, Epidemiology, Film and video, ILRI, Kenya, MarketOpps, Nigeria, PA, Uganda, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Bird flu, Dagoretti, Delia Grace, Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa, Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog, Ibadan, Mark Tran, Nairobi, SARS, Swine flu

A dairy farm in Dagoretti, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, where lines between city-life and farm-life are blurred (photo credit: Tristan McConnell).

Tristan McConnell reported in the GlobalPost yesterday that ‘In modern Africa, it can be hard to tell where the city ends and the countryside begins.

Rural Kenyans flocking to the city in ever-greater numbers bring their cows and crops, while the fast-growing cities sprawl outward, gobbling up fields and forests. . . . Driving toward the Nairobi suburb of Dagoretti, tall stalks of maize peak out between the neighboring walls of block apartments and banana trees peer over the tin-roofed shanties. Around corners appear little valleys patch-worked with smallholder plots known as shambas growing kale, spinach and carrots. . . .

‘This is all good, as the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute, points out. The benefits of urban livestock keeping are many: from improved food security, nutrition and health from livestock products, creation of jobs and protection from food price volatility. But the organization also warns: “The risks in urban livestock are also large: unsanitary conditions and weak infrastructure mean that livestock can be a source of pollution and disease.”. . .

The concentration of people and the mess of urbanization makes the emergence of new diseases more likely,” said Dr. Eric Fèvre, an epidemiologist working at the International Livestock Research Institute.

A study in the journal, “Tropical Animal Health and Production,” found that a quarter of infectious diseases in low-income countries, such as Kenya, come from animals. New examples emerge every four months. But the fear of these diseases is out of step with the real scale of the threat.

The answer, researchers argue, is not to legislate against keeping animals in urban environments, as governments often do, but to embrace and improve urban farming to make it safe and more hygienic.

Milk offers an example of how risks can be reduced, meaning that farmers get the financial benefit, consumers get the health benefit and potential disease can be checked.

Kenyans drink a staggering amount of milk, up to 100 kilograms a year each, with the vast majority bought on the informal market, at street stalls, milk bars or straight from the farmer, rather than processed, packaged and sold at a supermarket.

In terms of GDP, milk is more important than [the staple crop] maize,” said Amos Omore, a dairy expert. . . .

Ndumbuini Dairy and Milk Bar in Kabete, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya (photo credit: Tristan McConnell).

Read the whole article by Tristan McConnell in the GlobalPost: Urban farming: A lesson from Africa, 8 Oct 2012.

Filed under: Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, Biotech, CRP4, East Africa, Epidemiology, Health (human), ILRI, Kenya, MarketOpps, PA, West Africa, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Alaska Dispatch, Amos Omore, Dagoretti, Eric Fevre, GlobalPost, Ibadan, KARI, Milk, Nairobi, University of Ibadan, University of Nairobi

A CNN report this week on ‘The looming zoonotic danger’ makes use of some astounding figures developed by veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace and her team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Kenya.

‘We’ve seen an unprecedented rise in infectious diseases in recent decades, 75 percent of which are “zoonotic,” meaning they come from animals. About 300 new animal-to-human diseases have emerged in the last 60 years.

This summer, the International Livestock Research Institute released a report estimating that zoonotic diseases cause 2.5 billion cases of human illness each year and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide. Most of these illnesses and deaths are caused by diseases spread from farm animals. . . .

‘New chicken and pig flu viruses have emerged at an alarming rate in recent decades. The latest swine flu virus, dubbed H3N2v, claimed its first human victim last month in Ohio. Up until the 1990s, only about a dozen human cases of swine flu infection had ever been reported. In the last year alone, in contrast, H3N2v has infected 300 people, sending 15 to the hospital and one to the morgue. The H1N1 virus that emerged from pigs in 2009 infected an estimated 60 million Americans, resulting in 12,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

‘Both H3N2v and the pandemic H1N1 share genetic origins with the “triple reassortant” strain that spread throughout the U.S. pork industry in 1999, a virus that combined genes from bird, pig, and human strains. . . .

‘Bird flu followed a similar trajectory, from rare cases to a multitude of new chicken flu viruses now causing sporadic human outbreaks around the world. The greatest concern is that with increasing numbers of circulating pig and chicken flu viruses capable of infecting humans, a virus with the human transmissibility of H1N1 could combine with a virus with the human lethality of H5N1, a bird flu virus that has killed 359 of its 608 known human victims. Imagine the implications of 60 million Americans coming down with flu with a 60 percent mortality rate. . . .

‘For years, the public health community has warned about the risks of intensive livestock confinement. In 2003, the American Public Health Association called for a moratorium on concentrated animal feeding operations. In 2008, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which included a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, concluded that industrialized animal agriculture posed “unacceptable” risks to public health. A key recommendation was the phasing out of extreme confinement practices such as gestation crates, which “induce high levels of stress in the animals and threaten their health,” the commissioners wrote, “which in turn may threaten human health.” . . .

Read the whole article by Michael Greger, at CNN: The looming zoonotic danger, 26 Sep 2012.

Filed under: Agriculture, Animal Diseases, CRP4, ILRI, MarketOpps, North America, PA, Pigs, Poultry, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Bird flu, CNN, Delia Grace, Swine flu

Brian Perry working in his study where he and his wife, Helena, now live, in the Rift Valley of Kenya (photo credit: Brian Perry).

On 27 Sep 2012, Professor Brian Perry won the Trevor Blackburn Award of the British Veterinary Association ‘in recognition of his outstanding contributions to animal health and welfare in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the impact of his work in fostering the integration of veterinary epidemiology with agricultural economics, and his personal commitment to poverty alleviation by tackling diseases of global significance.’

The announcement came during an awards ceremony at the British Veterinary Association’s annual congress, in Liverpool.

Since graduating from the University of Edinburgh Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in 1969, Perry ‘has had a strong interest in, and commitment to, tropical veterinary medicine. His career has spanned a wide range of activities from rinderpest control in Ethiopia to global animal health.

‘Perry’s professional interests lie in the role of livestock in development, and how disease control strategies can be designed to achieve maximum impact in terms of growth, development and poverty reduction.’

For 20 years Brian Perry led multi-disciplinary programs at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi.

In 2002, Perry was appointed OBE for services to veterinary science in developing countries, and in 2004 became the first veterinarian to receive the International Outstanding Scientist Award from CGIAR.

On learning that he was to receive the Trevor Blackburn Award, Perry said:

I am indeed deeply honoured and privileged to be awarded the Trevor Blackburn Award for 2012 by the BVA Overseas Group . . . . Very many thanks indeed for this recognition of British veterinary contributions to sustainable and inclusive economic development in emergent nations of the world.

Brian Perry graduated as a vet from the University of Edinburgh in 1969. After a spell in general practice, he accepted a posting with what is now the Department for International Development (DFID) in Ethiopia, working on rinderpest control and disease surveys. He returned to Edinburgh for an MSc in Tropical Veterinary Science, before establishing a sheep disease research laboratory in Bogotá, Colombia, also with DFID, investigating constraints to smallholder sheep enterprises in the Andean region. From there he moved to Zambia as epidemiologist with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), determining disease control priorities for the smallholder livestock sector. Perry then moved to the USA where as an associate professor at the Virginia Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine he established the epidemiology teaching and research programs. While in Virginia he completed a doctorate at Edinburgh University under the mentorship of the late Gordon Scott.

In 1987, Perry took up the position of epidemiologist leading the epidemiology and impact assessment group at what is now the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya. For 20 years Brian led multi-disciplinary research programs at ILRI on the infection dynamics of tick-borne diseases in Africa, on rabies control, and on the impacts of foot-and-mouth disease in Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia. He fostered innovative approaches to the integration of veterinary epidemiology and agricultural economics as a tool for impact assessment and priority setting, and became progressively involved in dissecting the links between animal disease control and processes of economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.

After leaving ILRI as a staff member in 2007 (Perry continues to consult for ILRI), and while continuing to work on improved approaches to poverty reduction through livestock, Perry has specialized in independent evaluations of publicly funded investments in agriculture and disease control in different regions of the developing world, particularly work implemented by agencies of the United Nations. He led evaluations of global avian influenza programs in 2009, of agricultural development and emergency response programs in Ethiopia in 2010, and of a regional program for the control of foot-and-mouth disease in the Andean region of South America in 2012.

Perry has published over 150 scientific articles in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals, books and book chapters. An honorary professor at the universities of Edinburgh and Pretoria and a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, he chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of ‘Afrique One’, a Wellcome Trust-funded consortium of 11 African universities and research institutes adopting a ‘one-health’ approach and bringing together partners in Anglophone and Francophone Africa.

This article is from a press release by the British Veterinary Association: Professor Brian Perry receives the Trevor Blackburn Award, 27 Sep 2012.

Filed under: Animal Health, Award, Biotech, Disease Control, Epidemiology, ILRI, PA, RVF Tagged: Brian Perry

An initiative called the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, which is hosted by the UK’s STEPS Centre, at the Institute of Development Studies, in Brighton, issued a news release today regarding the science and poverty implications of transmissions of animal-to-human diseases. This comes upon reports by UK officials this week of a the appearance of a new strain of a SARS-like virus.

The SARS virus, which causes serious respiratory illness, is derived from bats. It spread globally in 2002–3, killing hundreds of people.

‘More than 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases in humans over the past few decades have jumped species from animals to humans. Some quietly devastate poor people’s lives and their livelihoods; others have the potential to create dangerous global threats.

‘World-class scientists from the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium are available to comment on both the science of animal-to-human disease transmission and the poverty implications of these emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Drivers of Disease is an interdisciplinary international research programme exploring the links between zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing. Our experts include:

‘Melissa Leach
‘Director of the STEPS Centre and of the Drivers of Disease Consortium is a social anthropologist specialising in environmental and science-society issues. Her recent work considers policy responses to Avian flu, H1N1 (‘Swine flu’) and other epidemics. She co-edited Epidemics – Science, Governance and Social Justice (2010). She can speak on the poverty impacts of zoonoses and the implications for policymakers.

‘James Wood
‘Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at Cambridge University. He is an expert on the processes underlying emergence of infectious diseases, particularly the emergence of virus infections from bats and how they might spread to domestic animals and humans. His work is focused in West Africa. He can speak on the processes and routes of zoonotic disease transmission.

‘Delia Grace
‘Veterinary epidemiologist [leading] work at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi on interactions between agriculture and human health. She recently co-authored a major mapping study, Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots (2012) which identified 13 zoonotic diseases which together cause 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths each year, mainly among the world’s poorest people.

Notes
For interviews or further information, contact n.marks[at]ids.ac.uk or c.holley[at]ids.ac.uk. Out of hours, tel 07881 456498.

Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium
is a research programme designed to deliver much-needed cutting-edge science on the relationships between ecosystems, zoonoses, health and wellbeing, with the objective of moving people out of poverty and promoting social justice. The three-and-a-half-year, £3.2m Consortium is focusing on four emerging or re-emerging emerging zoonotic diseases in four diverse African ecosystems. . . . The work is funded with support from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA). . . .

STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability)
is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement centre uniting development studies with science and technology studies. We are developing a new approach to understanding and action on sustainability and development and are funded by the ESRC. Twitter: @stepscentre

Filed under: Africa, Animal Health, Biotech, Disease Control, Epidemiology, ILRI, MarketOpps, PA, RVF Tagged: Delia Grace, Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, ESPA, IDS, SARS, STEPS Centre, Trypanosomosis

An artist’s rendition of the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) that will launch in Feb 2013 (photo credit: NASA). The Landsat program is the longest continuous global record of Earth observations from space—ever. Since its first satellite went up in the summer of 1972, Landsat has been looking at our planet. The view of Earth that this 40-year satellite program has recorded allows scientists to see, in ways they never imagined, how the Earth’s surface has transformed, over time.

Michael Baron, of the UK’s Institute for Animal Health, blogs this week on Global Food Security, a new UK program uniting the country’s main public funders of food-related research, about a new insurance project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya.

‘. . . For most such small farmers and livestock keepers [in the developing world], there has until recently been no insurance to help them weather the vagaries of the weather, because there was no way for the insurers to check on actual losses.

‘In the absence of insurance to share the risks, such farmers tend to be very risk averse, even if that means not trying out new crops, or new breeds of cattle or sheep. Because they cannot afford to try new things, improvements in agricultural productivity happen slowly, if at all, which is very bad if we are all trying hard to boost global food security.

‘Recently, people like the World Bank, the UN and the World Food Programme have been looking to get around this problem by using ‘index-based insurance . . ., which . . . come up with an index that links recorded weather in an area to average harvests.

‘Farmers can then take out insurance, essentially, against the index being low. If the index goes below a certain cut off, there is a payout. As it goes lower, there is a bigger payout. The actual loss to each farmer does not have to be measured, the process is transparent, everyone is happy. This kind of insurance, only introduced in 2003, has become increasingly popular.

‘So far so good, as long as you have a lot of weather stations. In large parts of Africa, the only weather stations are in the towns, where they aren’t much use in saying how the weather has been in the rural areas.

This problem, of how to create index-based agricultural insurance in countries with limited infrastructure, has been recently tackled by economists and agricultural scientists working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya.

They have come up with a rather clever solution. They realised that for nearly 30 years NASA has had satellites taking pictures as they pass over Africa—pictures from which they have been deriving useful data such as the density and spread of vegetation. For poor livestock keepers, the measure of vegetation is a measure of food availability for their animals, which is a good measure of how much milk and meat they are going to have, and how well their animals are growing.

All the satellite data are freely available, so the people at ILRI used it to develop an index that related this measure of how much vegetation there was after each rainy season with sales records from the local livestock markets and came up with an index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), which they have been running in a pilot project in the arid parts of northern Kenya.

They used local people to help spread information about IBLI, and even developed games (PDF) to help teach local livestock keepers about how the insurance worked. So far, the pilot has been a significant success story, and they are looking to expand the concept to other countries in the area. . . .

Read the whole blog at Global Food Security: From insecurity to food security, 17 Sep 2012.

Visit the Index-Based Livestock Insurance blog.

About the animal disease research of blog author Michael Baron and ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeffrey Mariner
Michael Baron works at the Institute for Animal Health UK) researching the basic biology of rinderpest and peste des petit ruminants (PPR), two important diseases of livestock affecting primarily animals in developing countries. He leads research to develop rapid pen-side diagnostics and improved vaccines for PPR, as well as studying the basic biology of the virus. See previous blog posts on this ILRI Clippings blog about ILRI researcher Jeffrey Mariner and the eradication of rinderpest; Mariner is also now working with a small team at ILRI on PPR; he is developing a thermostable vaccine for PPR and designing ways to disseminate, using lessons he and others learned from their work to help eradicate rinderpest.

Filed under: CRP11, Drought, Drylands, East Africa, Ethiopia, Food security, Geodata, ILRI, Insurance, Kenya, PA, Pastoralism, PLE, PPR, Vulnerability Tagged: Global Food Security Blog, IBLI, Jeffrey Mariner, Rinderpest

Tom Olaka, a community animal health worker in Karamajong, northern Uganda, was part of a vaccination campaign in remote areas of the Horn of Africa that drove the cattle plague rinderpest to extinction in 2010 (photo credit: Christine Jost).

Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist about How African herders rid the planet of a disease, citing a veterinary epidemiologist named Jeffrey Mariner, who works in the Nairobi animal health laboratories of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) (13 Sep 2012).

‘Out in the bush, scientists should be humble and bow to the greater knowledge of locals. A paper out today tells the story of how rinderpest—a cattle plague that brought down empires and caused some of Africa’s worst famines—was finally eradicated, in May last year.

‘According to Jeffrey Mariner of Tufts University in North Grafton, Maryland [and now at ILRI]—one of the key players in the eradication—it was achieved by using the expertise of local cattle herders rather than the floundering efforts of outsiders. He and his colleagues advocate applying this “barefoot” strategy to other animal diseases. . . .

‘[After many false starts by international organizations,] Mariner and other scientists developed a heat-resistant vaccine that needed no refrigeration and so could be kept in remote locations that did not have electricity.

Then—often despite opposition from official vets—they began recruiting cattle herders to wield the syringes.

‘The herders would walk for days in regions where vets in four-wheel drives seldom ventured. Most critical of all, says Mariner, they used their local knowledge of the disease and the movements of cattle to target vaccination drives. . . .

‘Mariner hopes to start work next year on distributing a new heat-resistant vaccine for the “goat plague”—or peste des petits ruminants—which is endemic in much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. . . .’

Read the whole article in New Scientist: How African herders rid the planet of a disease (13 Sep 2012).

Read the ILRI News Blog about this: New analysis in ‘Science’ tells how world eradicated deadliest cattle plague from the face of the Earth, 13 Sep 2012.

Read the paper in Science (subscription required to read full text): Rinderpest eradication: Appropriate technology and social innovations, by Jeffrey Mariner, James House, Charles Mebus, Albert Sollod, Dickens Chibeu, Bryony Jones, Peter Roeder, Berhanu Admassu, Gijs van ’t Klooster, 14 September 2012, Vol. 337 no. 6100 pp. 1309–1312, DOI: 10.1126/science.1223805.

Read previous articles on the ILRI News and Clippings blogs about the eradication of rinderpest:

ILRI’s Jeff Mariner speaks on what he learned from the eradication of rinderpest–and his new fight against ‘goat plague’, 15 Sep 2012.

Goat plague next target of veterinary authorities now that cattle plague has been eradicated, 4 Jul 2011.

Deadly rinderpest virus today declared eradicated from the earth–’greatest achievement in veterinary medicine’, 28 Jun 2011.

After successful eradication of rinderpest, African researchers now focus on peste des petits ruminants, the most urgent threat to African livestock, 22 Nov 2010.

Why technical breakthroughs matter: They helped drive a cattle plague to extinction, 28 Oct 2010.

Filed under: Article, Biotech, Cattle, Disease Control, Epidemiology, Goats, ILRI, PA, Pastoralism, PPR, Sheep, Vaccines Tagged: Fred Pearce, Jeffrey Mariner, New Scientist, Rinderpest, Science

ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Mariner presents his research at a meeting of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) (photo credit: OIE).

Lauren Everitt of AllAfrica interviewed Jeffrey Mariner, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, about a current article he co-authored in Science (13 Sep 2012) on lessons learned in the eradication of rinderpest.

Mariner described how, while working at Tufts University, he tweaked a proven rinderpest vaccine to make it temperature stable so it could survive transport in Africa’s extreme temperatures—a critical development.

However, the scientist credits the eradication achievement to his team’s results-oriented focus, reliance on tried-and-true science and willingness to forge partnerships with local communities. He said he is taking the lessons learned from rinderpest and applying them to his newest challenge—tackling a disease killing off goats and sheep across Africa.

‘Most of us have heard of smallpox, the only other disease to be completely eradicated, but few people are as familiar with rinderpest. Could you describe the disease and why it was selected for eradication as opposed to foot-and-mouth disease, for example?’

Mariner: ‘It’s a German term so “rinder” is cattle and “pest” means plague, which translates to “cattle plague” in English. And it’s a highly fatal diarrheal disease so animals that were infected would generally die within a week … up to a 90 percent fatality rate. . . .

‘This is only the second disease in history to be completely eliminated, and the first ever livestock disease. Why was your team successful where others have failed?’

Mariner: ‘. . . We’re getting much smarter in two senses: One was how we delivered vaccines. We started to work through the community and local health workers. The other sense was about targeting our approach, thinking about the key populations for the transmission of rinderpest and then focusing our resources on those. . . .

If you do want to do global eradication, you have to do the hard places as well as the easy places. And having solutions for the most challenging places is the crux of eradication.

‘The first vaccine created for rinderpest worked, but it had to be refrigerated—making transport to rural African areas nearly impossible. What other false starts and challenges did you have to contend with?’

Mariner: ‘The vaccine we started with was an amazing vaccine . . . —it just had to be kept cold. Our idea was to take that vaccine and to just change the way it was freeze dried, effectively repackaging the vaccine. . . .

The challenge for us was that the idea was so simple. . . . [W]e actually had trouble generating attention for what we were doing. We had this solution to the problem but it wasn’t the kind of thing that got you in Science because it wasn’t some bizarre, novel approach. It was just a good, basic approach using an existing product and very focused on a solution. . . .

‘I’m applying the same approach to peste des petits ruminants (PPR), which is a disease that affects sheep and goats with the same issues as rinderpest, such as high mortality rates. I’ve taken that vaccine and used the same approach, and I got the same questions when applying for funding: Why are you using this old technology? If this was really going to work, wouldn’t someone have already done it by now? And I gave them the answer that I was told the same thing years ago and we eradicated rinderpest. . . .

‘From the article it’s clear that scientists relied on nomadic herders to help in eradicating rinderpest. Could you talk about the role they played and how scientists leveraged their knowledge?’

Mariner: ‘Their knowledge was key in two senses. One, they were very good at identifying rinderpest. It’s such an important disease for them that they had names for it. They could describe it. It was part of their oral history. The history would actually be handed down from fathers to sons about the different names of the disease. And you could talk to them about how it was behaving in the community, where it had been last year, where it was last week, and they could tell you where it was today. When we figured that out it was much easier for us to target the programs because we were able to use their information to know where we needed to focus. . . .

When we came up with the idea of training them to vaccinate, they were very receptive. They couldn’t dream of anything more exciting than going to a training course to vaccinate their own cattle. It was amazing. Although most of them weren’t literate, we were teaching them by demonstrating and step-by-step training and with some infographic materials. They were very interested and very good learners, and they handled the vaccine very well and were able to do those complicated steps, such as rehydrating the vaccine and using the proper time interval.

‘And because they were vaccinating their own cattle, they did it properly. . . .

‘In order to eradicate a disease you need widespread buy-in; people in diverse parts of the world must allow their livestock to be vaccinated. Did you meet with any pockets of resistance or groups that were reluctant to vaccinate their cattle? If so, how did you deal with them?’

Mariner: ‘. . . The area where we actually met resistance was in more conventional circles like veterinary services. Convincing them that they needed to hand over vaccination activities to illiterate herders was often a major policy challenge that we had to struggle with over the years. The veterinary profession is rather conservative, and there’s lots of talk about ethics—what you can hand over to who, and who can inject and those sorts of things. We had to contend with “I have a medical degree, and they don’t” and all those kinds of questions.

We were also trying to help people understand that what’ s appropriate in the developing world maybe isn’t appropriate in the first world, and what’s appropriate in the first world may not be appropriate in the developing world. If you insist on certain practices, you’re actually denying millions of people service. . . . And for us it was very clear that farmers all over the world could handle their own livestock and were doing a super job when they had training, so they should be given power to do that.

‘. . . Many of us have heard of avian flu and mad cow disease yet the eradication of rinderpest in 2011 went largely unnoticed. It could be argued that rinderpest has a larger impact on the human condition than some of these other diseases – any thoughts on why it received so little attention?’

Mariner: ‘. . . [Part of the reason is that the] international community, the animal health community, dropped the ball. When rinderpest was eradicated, this was a tremendous achievement, and it also showed that the animal health profession could really do something complicated and useful. But the major international players didn’t make proper use of the event. So a part of that is our fault as a profession—that we didn’t carry that message forward in a correct way and with enough enthusiasm about it.

One of the many problems that we had with rinderpest was that many times donors or governments would say that these countries don’t have the capacity to eliminate it. They would ask, “So why should we give them money when it’s going to be wasted?” With rinderpest they proved they could do it, they proved they could use the investment, but the message didn’t get carried on that they have that capacity.

‘What next? Now that you’ve eliminated rinderpest have you set your sights on eliminating another pestilence?’

Mariner: ‘We have. It’s peste des petits ruminants (PPR), also known as “goat plague.” There’s international interest in developing a progressive, controlled program. It’s a disease that’s high impact, and it’s also spreading. It’s across Africa, it’s across the Middle East and South Asia, it’s even reached to places like China in the last couple years, so it’s a disease that’s spreading. It affects small ruminants (sheep and goats), which are actually a very important species for the poor. Small ruminants are marketed much more easily so they have a lot more to do with household food security than cattle.

So we’re working on taking the lessons from rinderpest and developing those to help control and eventually eradicate PPR. I’ve been working in the lab to make the PPR vaccine thermally stable, and we have succeeded with that.

‘Now we’ll bring it into the field to look at different approaches to vaccination, similar to what we did with rinderpest, looking at how to involve the community and rural health workers in the remote areas and private practitioners. How do we combine all of those parties into public-private partnerships? And we’re starting to go back to Uganda and to Sudan again—I’m leaving for Sudan next week.

‘Where there any key lessons that you took from your work with rinderpest that you’re going to apply moving forward?’

Mariner: ‘The two situations are remarkably similar. PPR has a good vaccine that just needs to become more stable. The key issues are again how to do the vaccination, and what’s the right way to combine the community and the veterinarians and so that everyone works together to accomplish the task. The other is: which are the key populations that we need to vaccinate? How do we target the vaccination to get maximal impact? So those are the epidemiological and sociological research questions, if you like, and that’s really where we need to focus our efforts now. . . .’

Read the whole interview at AllAfrica: African herders help eradicate deadly livestock disease, 13 Sep 2012.

Read the ILRI News Blog about this: New analysis in ‘Science’ tells how world eradicated deadliest cattle plague from the face of the Earth, 13 Sep 2012.

Read the paper in Science (subscription required to read full text): Rinderpest eradication: Appropriate technology and social innovations, by Jeffrey Mariner, James House, Charles Mebus, Albert Sollod, Dickens Chibeu, Bryony Jones, Peter Roeder, Berhanu Admassu, Gijs van ’t Klooster, 14 September 2012, Vol. 337 no. 6100 pp. 1309–1312, DOI: 10.1126/science.1223805.

Read previous articles on the ILRI News Blog about the eradication of rinderpest:

Goat plague next target of veterinary authorities now that cattle plague has been eradicated, 4 Jul 2011.

Deadly rinderpest virus today declared eradicated from the earth–’greatest achievement in veterinary medicine’, 28 Jun 2011.

After successful eradication of rinderpest, African researchers now focus on peste des petits ruminants, the most urgent threat to African livestock, 22 Nov 2010.

Why technical breakthroughs matter: They helped drive a cattle plague to extinction, 28 Oct 2010.

Filed under: Article, Biotech, Disease Control, Epidemiology, Goats, ILRI, PA, Pastoralism, PPR, Sheep, Sudan, Uganda, Vaccines Tagged: AllAfrica, EU, Jeff Mariner, Rinderpest, Science, Tufts University

A news item on The Pig Site argues that the risk of disease among farm animals and farm biosecurity are a public affair.”

The August 2012 issue of EuroChoices, the Journal of the Agricultural Economics Society and European Association of Agricultural Economists, looks at the role of economics in animal health decision making and how an economic approach can add value to animal health policies.

The issue also contains an article by Tim Carpenter and Karl Rich that asks how animal disease risks can be better managed. They argue that “understanding the nature of disease-related risks is crucial to improve policymaking and requires multidisciplinary toolkits” especially “if the disease is what is termed zoonotic i.e. impacting both animal and human health alike.”

 

Filed under: Animal Diseases, Emerging Diseases, Policy, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: risk

Villagers watch on as a team restrains a small pig for blood sampling in Luang Prabang, Laos (photo credit: ILRI/Kate Blaszak).

Delia Grace, an Irish veterinary epidemiologist and public health expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says shifts in forest cover, agricultural practices, mining and reservoirs are thought to be affecting the transmission of diseases from animals to humans.

In an opinion piece running in The Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog, Grace says that ‘animals in Africa, both wild and domesticated, sustain livelihoods and promote wellbeing. They provide nutrition, labour, trade and currency, and bring millions of tourist dollars into the continent every year.

‘Yet, increasingly, they also bring disease. Since 1940, more than 60% of infectious diseases newly affecting people in Africa have been transmitted via animals. But even more important are the “classical” zoonoses such as bovine TB or pig tapeworm. Recent research shows that, globally, the top 13 zoonotic diseases are responsible for 2.2 million human deaths every year. The vast majority of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries, where they often affect disenfranchised communities.

Even when these diseases do not kill, their effects devastate poor people’s lives and hamper development efforts. Such diseases have the potential to cross countries and continents with alarming speed—witness the spread of Sars and avian flu in recent years.

‘A handful of high-profile zoonotic diseases such as avian flu attract vast amounts of research money. But there is a large and growing number that are poorly understood and in which there has been much less investment in research or control. Zoonoses fall between the medical and veterinary sectors and are among the most underdiagnosed diseases.

‘. . . [E]nvironmental changes are thought to be affecting the emergence and spread of new infectious diseases in people. Climate change, urbanisation, forest clearance and many of the other rapid environmental shifts large parts of Africa are undergoing are also thought to be playing their part in the changing dynamics of disease transmission. Unless these dynamics are better understood, public health efforts aimed at curbing disease spread can only ever be partial.

. . . [I]t is time for some joined-up thinking on disease.

‘The process of untangling the complex links between ecosystems, health and poverty is an essential start to a more integrated and so more effective approach to disease control, and an altogether healthier future for many millions of Africans and their animals.’

Delia Grace is a partner with the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium.

Read the whole opinion piece in The Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog: Are environmental changes spreading Rift Valley and Lassa fevers?, 23 Jul 2012.

Read an ILRI news release on a new study by Grace: New ILRI study maps hotspots of human-animal infectious diseases and emerging disease outbreaks, 5 Jul 2012.

Filed under: Africa, Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, CRP4, Emerging Diseases, Environment, Epidemiology, Health (human), ILRI, Kenya, MarketOpps, Opinion piece, PA, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Delia Grace, Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog, Rift Valley fever

Illustration by Olaf Hajek, in The New York Times Sunday Review: ‘The Ecology of disease’, 14 Jul 2012.

Jim Robbins in The New York Times Sunday Review today writes about the ways breakdowns in the world’s ecosystems can ‘come back to haunt us in ways we  know little about. . . .

Multimedia Graphic Hot Spots for Emerging Diseases

‘A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics—AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades—don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.

‘Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic—they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife. . . .

‘How livestock are kept in poor countries, he says, ‘can magnify diseases borne by wild animals.

A study released earlier this month by the International Livestock Research Institute found that more than two million people a year are killed by diseases that spread to humans from wild and domestic animals.

‘The Nipah virus in South Asia, and the closely related Hendra virus in Australia, both in the genus of henipah viruses, are the most urgent examples of how disrupting an ecosystem can cause disease. . . .

‘Emerging infectious diseases are either new types of pathogens or old ones that have mutated to become novel, as the flu does every year. AIDS, for example, crossed into humans from chimpanzees in the 1920s when bush-meat hunters in Africa killed and butchered them.

‘Diseases have always come out of the woods and wildlife and found their way into human populations—the plague and malaria are two examples. But emerging diseases have quadrupled in the last half-century, experts say, largely because of increasing human encroachment into habitat, especially in disease “hot spots” around the globe, mostly in tropical regions. And with modern air travel and a robust market in wildlife trafficking, the potential for a serious outbreak in large population centers is enormous. . . .

‘Dr. Ostfeld has seen two emerging diseases—babesiosis and anaplasmosis—that affect humans in the ticks he studies, and he has raised the alarm about the possibility of their spread.

The best way to prevent the next outbreak in humans, specialists say, is with what they call the One Health Initiative—a worldwide program, involving more than 600 scientists and other professionals, that advances the idea that human, animal and ecological health are inextricably linked and need to be studied and managed holistically.

‘“It’s not about keeping pristine forest pristine and free of people,” says Simon Anthony, a molecular virologist at EcoHealth. “It’s learning how to do things sustainably. If you can get a handle on what it is that drives the emergence of a disease, then you can learn to modify environments sustainably.” . . .

Read the whole article in The New York Times: The Ecology of Disease, 14 Jul 2012.

Read other news clippings about the new ILRI report mapping likely hotspots of zoonoses and poverty:
IRIN: More milk and meat at a price, 5 Jul 2012.
Nature: Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor, 5 Jul 2012. Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10953

Read the ILRI news release about this new ILRI publication: New ILRI study maps hotspots of human-animal infectious diseases and emerging disease outbreaks, 5 Jul 2012.

Read the whole ILRI report: Mapping of poverty and likely zoonoses hotspots, report to the UK Department for International Development, by Delia Grace et al., ILRI, Institute of Zoology, Hanoi School of Public Health, 2012.

Filed under: Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, CRP4, Emerging Diseases, Epidemiology, Geodata, HIV-AIDS, ILRI, PA, Project, Report, Wildlife, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis, Delia Grace, DFID, EcoHealth, Hendra virus, New York Times, Nipah virus, One Health, USAID

This transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicted a number of Nipah virus virions that had been isolated from a patient’s cerebrospinal fluid. Nipah virus, related but not identical to Hendra virus, was initially isolated in 1999 upon examining samples from an outbreak of encephalitis and respiratory illness among adult men in Malaysia and Singapore (image credit: Microbe World/Cynthia Goldsmith, Centers for Disease Control).

IRIN reports
‘Only 13 diseases or infections transmitted from animals to humans like tuberculosis (TB) and Rift Valley fever, are responsible for around 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths per year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries.

‘In the least developed countries, 20 percent of human sickness and death was due to zoonoses—diseases that had recently jumped species from animals to people—according to a new study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Institute of Zoology in Britain, and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam.

‘The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that at least 61 percent of all human diseases, and 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic or caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus or other communicable disease agent picked up from an animal source.

‘While zoonoses can be transmitted to people by either wild or domesticated animals . . . most human infections are acquired from the world’s 24 billion livestock, including pigs, poultry, cattle, goats, sheep and camels. . . .

‘The goal of the research was to identify areas where better control of zoonotic diseases would most benefit poor people. . . .

‘One of the biggest threats is posed by the booming trade in poultry and pigs. Ongoing research is being led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which is part of a global research network funded partly by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Historically, high-density pig and poultry populations have been important in maintaining and mixing influenza populations,” said John McDermott, director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health.

A major concern is that as new livestock systems intensify, particularly in small- and medium-sized pig production, more intensive systems will allow the maintenance and transmission of pathogens. A number of new zoonoses, such as Nipah virus infections, have emerged in that way.” . . .

‘”For sure, there are both benefits and harms associated with producing any food type. It is important to factor in the cost of disease when assessing the benefits of more livestock, and to support systems which are “disease-proofed”—that is, designed in such a way as to minimize disease risks,” [ILRI's Delia Grace] noted. . . .’

Read the whole article at IRIN: More milk and meat at a price, 5 Jul 2012.

Reuters reports
‘A global study mapping human diseases that come from animals like tuberculosis, AIDS, bird flu or Rift Valley fever has found that just 13 such diseases are responsible for 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths a year.

‘The vast majority of infections and deaths from so-called zoonotic diseases are in poor or middle-income countries, but “hotspots” are also cropping up in the United States and Europe where diseases are newly infecting humans, becoming particularly virulent, or are developing drug resistance.

‘And exploding global demand for livestock products means the problem is likely to get worse, researchers said. . . .

The study, conducted by the ILRI, the Institute of Zoology in Britain and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam, mapped livestock-keeping and diseases humans get from animals, and drew up a list of the top 20 geographical hotspots.

It found that Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, as well as India have the highest zoonotic disease burdens, with widespread illness and death.

John McDermott, director of the CGIAR research program on agriculture for nutrition and health led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), said that in booming livestock sectors in developing nations the fastest growing areas are poultry and pigs—putting the potential disease risk emphasis on flu.

“Historically, high-density pig and poultry populations have been important in maintaining and mixing influenza populations,” he said in a statement accompanying the study.

“A major concern is that as new livestock systems intensify, particularly small- and medium-sized pig production … more intensive systems will allow the maintenance and transmission of pathogens. A number of new zoonoses … have emerged in that way.”‘

Read the whole article at Reuters: Diseases from animals hit over 2 billion people a year, 5 Jul 2012.

Read the whole report: Mapping of poverty and likely zoonoses hotspots, report to the UK Department for International Development by Delia Grace et al., ILRI, Institute of Zoology, Hanoi School of Public Health, 2012.

Read about the report in an article in Nature: Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor, 5 Jul 2012. Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10953

Filed under: Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, CRP4, Disease Control, Emerging Diseases, ILRI, MarketOpps, PA, Project, Report, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Delia Grace, IFPRI, IRIN, John McDermott, Reuters

Zoonotic emerging infectious disease events (non-wild hosts). Published In report to DFID by Delia Grace et al.:  Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots, ILRI, 2012 (map credit: ILRI/Delia Grace).

Natasha Gilbert reports today in Nature on the ‘Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor’, noting that ‘the United States and western Europe are hotspots for emerging diseases’.

The world’s poorest people also carry the heaviest burden from diseases that infect both humans and animals, according to a study published on 5 July. The report identifies 13 such ‘zoonotic’ diseases, including tuberculosis, anthrax and hepatitis E, which together cause 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths each year, mostly in low- and middle-income nations.

‘The greatest impacts are concentrated in just a few countries including India, Nigeria and Ethiopia, where large populations and close daily contact between people and livestock provide ripe conditions for endemic zoonotic diseases to arise and spread, the study says. In contrast, the developed world, including the northeastern United States and the United Kingdom, are hotspots of emerging zoonotic infections, such as avian influenza.

‘“Zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health. The burden for poor farmers is big,” says Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, and lead author of the study.

‘The research team, which also included researchers from the Institute of Zoology in London, and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam, analysed 1,000 surveys of disease covering 10 million people and 6 million animals.

‘Livestock provides poor families with up to half their income and 6–35% of their protein intake. Demand for livestock products such as meat and milk is rising across the globe and could offer poor farmers a route out of poverty as markets expand, but zoonotic disease are a major obstacle to this goal. For example, the study estimates that one in eight livestock animals in poor countries are affected by brucellosis, reducing milk and meat production in cattle by 8%. In addition, 27% of livestock in developing countries showed signs of current or past infection with bacterial food-borne disease.

‘The latest research will help direct efforts and resources to where they are most needed, so that they can have the greatest impact in tackling disease and poverty, says Grace.

‘The study builds on previous efforts to rank zoonotic diseases affecting the poor. But those efforts relied on the opinions of experts and farmers and so were less objective than this study, she says.

‘It also updates and adds to existing disease maps, which focused on emerging human diseases covering the years 1940–20042.

The new report includes data up to 2012, finding an additional 30 disease reports both before and since 2004. It shows that the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia are the key hotspots for emerging zoonotic diseases. It is unclear why endemic diseases and emerging diseases follow different geographical patterns, says Grace, a finding that conflicts with the idea held by many scientists that the crucible of disease emergence is biodiversity hotspots, which tend to be found in developing countries. . . .’

Read the whole article in Nature: Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor, 5 Jul 2012. Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10953

Read the whole report: Mapping of poverty and likely zoonoses hotspots, report to the UK Department for International Development by Delia Grace et al., ILRI, Institute of Zoology, Hanoi School of Public Health, 2012.

Filed under: Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, East Africa, Emerging Diseases, Epidemiology, Ethiopia, ILRI, India, MarketOpps, Nigeria, PA, Report, South Asia, USA, West Africa, Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: Delia Grace, DFID, Hanoi School of Public Health, Institute of Zoology, Nature, Nature (journal), Western Europe

Classical swine fever is a highly contagious, potentially fatal viral disease that affects pigs. This disease is a major constraint to the development of pig farming systems in northeast India where pig farming is a main source of livelihood for most households. About 80 per cent of households in northeast India rear pigs and pork is a key part of the local diet.

A 2011 participatory epidemiological study conducted in Assam, Nagaland and Mizoram by the International Livestock Research Instititute (ILRI) with support from Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) and Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust (NRTT) revealed that pig farmers in India incur huge losses from mortality, treatment and replacement costs—amounting to over 2 billion rupees each year.

This ILRI Policy Brief briefly explains measures to control classical swine fever and recommends policy interventions to prevent and control the disease.

The brief was produced as part of the Enhancing Livelihoods through Livestock Knowledge Systems project under the TATA-ILRI partnership program.

Download the Policy Brief

Filed under: Agriculture, Animal Diseases, Asia, ILRI, India, Pigs, Policy, South Asia, Vaccines Tagged: Classical swine fever, ELKS, TATA

Zoonoses pose an increasing problem globally due to increasing world human population, intensifying livestock production and ongoing encroachment of people into formerly sheltered natural ecosystems and greater contact with wildlife.

Technical solutions alone are not enough to respond to this increasing challenge. Understanding the social, cultural, economic and governance issues around zoonoses in different regions, and the policies, institutions and stakeholders needed to combat such threats effectively, is also an imperative.

A new website provides examples of policies, institutions and stakeholders involved in the management of zoonoses, collated in a meta-database, together with discussion of cross-cutting themes and case studies to illustrate potential approaches.

Visit the website

Filed under: Agri-Health, Animal Diseases, Emerging Diseases, Health (human), Zoonotic Diseases Tagged: CSIRO, DFID