Cover of the new ILRI-UNEP zoonoses report and a graphic representation of the virus causing COVID-19—SARS-CoV-2—by ILRI communications specialist Annabel Slater. [A] scientific assessment from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) finds that...
Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty addressed the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) at its latest Town Hall meeting Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine and ILRI patron Peter Doherty discussed vaccines, herd immunity, and policy responses to COVID-19 with Director General Jimmy...
As the we commemorate the World Environment Day, 5 -June-2020, the criticality of the One Health approach, integrating human, animal and environmental health has continued to come to the fore. Yet, more attention needs to be given to the environmental health component including of the resource base...
Uganda field work in Bugiri using proportional piling to assess disease mobility and mortality in livestock (photo credit: ILRI) . This article was written by Ekta Patel and edited by Paul Karaimu In an effort to support animal disease surveillance in Uganda, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF)...
In a spirited and at times defiantly hopeful presentation at the International Livestock Research Institute’s (ILRI) weekly digital town hall meeting on 14 May, David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General on COVID-19, called the virus causing the disease ‘...
The acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has written that the ongoing tragedy of COVID-19 is a sort of global X-ray, exposing the weak or broken elements under the surface of the world’s economic and health systems. One of those elements, arguably, is a failure to bring enough financial and...
A cattle keeper in Laos gives her cow salt (photo credit: ILRI Stevie Mann). ‘People who keep animals, such as cows, as a food source are concerned about the novel coronavirus spreading between humans and animals. Studies in Germany and China find pigs, chickens, ducks not susceptible to SARS-CoV-2...
As part of a special COVID-19 series by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Bernard Bett and Delia Randolph of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and John McDermott of IFPRI write on the growing risk in Africa of pathogens that spread from animals to people...
A wet market in Shanghai (via Global Times). The following article by Christos Lynteris , University of St Andrews , and Lyle Fearnley , Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD, is republished from The Conversation. In late 2019, a new coronavirus—now formally known as Covid-19— emerged...
The outbreak of COVID-19 is a rude awakening to many who believed the era of infectious disease was over. In this post, Bernard Bett, Delia Randolph and John McDermott argue that not only are pandemics not over, they may be increasing in frequency; and while most originated in Asia in the past,...
A dead monkey sold as bushmeat hangs outside a villager’s house in north-east Gabon. Photograph: Christine Nesbitt/AP An article in The Guardian newspaper raises the question of whether human destruction of nature is responsible for mass pandemics like COVID-19. It quotes Eric Fevre , a principal...
Bill Gates (photo credit: Marcos Fuentes via Flickr). What keeps Bill Gates up at night? It’s not child mortality. Not malaria. Not polio. All of which his foundation battles every day. It’s not war, which most of the world tends to worry about. It’s what Gates thinks is the most predictable threat...
