News Archive

ILRI clippings

The geometry of disease: A longitudinal calf cohort study in Kenya has yielded a unique database and biorepository

Fun with Lines and Curves by Elsie C. Ellison, 1972 (binding illustration). The IDEAL project, first attempt to study the complete pathogen landscape of any species, has generated a unique dataset and biorepository for researchers of infectious diseases of cattle in East Africa. ‘The Infectious...

ILRI News

Improving animal health in southern Africa—Why it matters and what to do

Cattle being herded towards green pasture on the flood plain in western Zambia (photo credit: WorldFish/Felix Clay/Duckrabbit). In a new book chapter (Ch. 15, Technologies for agricultural transformation: Animal health ), Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the...

ILRI clippings

The seven deadly drivers of zoonotic disease pandemics

Three-quarters of emerging illnesses come from animals and a new report identifies climate change as a primary driver of many of them. ‘As the new coronavirus continues to turn the world upside down, crashing economies and overextending health care systems, epidemiologists and infectious disease...

ILRI News

New project to improve agricultural productivity in Zimbabwe

Cattle at a livestock market in Ukambani, Kenya (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan). A new European Union-funded ‘Livestock Production Systems in Zimbabwe’ (LIPS-Zim) project is working to increase agricultural productivity in the country’s agro-ecological Zones IV and V. It is promoting the...

ILRI News

Joint UN-CGIAR assessment explains how animal-to-human pandemics like COVID-19 occur and how to prevent them in future

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...

ILRI News

‘A vaccine is coming—the question is how soon’

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...

ILRI News

Focus on environmental health: The role of rangelands in an integrated One Health approach

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...

ILRI News

Expanding capacity for participatory disease surveillance in Uganda

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)...

ILRI News

‘A chance to reimagine life in a way that creates greater dignity for all’

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 ‘...

ILRI News

Global diagnosis – one health approach necessary

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...

ILRI clippings

Domestic livestock not a source of the COVID-19 disease—ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Eric Fevre

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...

AgHealth blog

Lessons on tackling the growing risk of emerging infectious diseases in Africa

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...