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Date:  Sept. 22, 2009

Contacts:  Christine Stencel, Senior Media Relations Officer

Alison Burnette, Media Relations Assistant

Office of News and Public Information

202-334-2138; e-mail <news@nas.edu>

For immediate release

More Sophisticated, Better Coordinated Global System Needed

To Effectively Prevent, Detect, Respond to Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

WASHINGTON -- Significant weaknesses undermine the global community's abilities to prevent, detect early, and respond efficiently to potentially deadly species-crossing microbes, such as the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus sweeping the globe, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council.  The report provides a detailed plan for establishing and funding a comprehensive, globally coordinated system to identify novel zoonotic disease threats as early as possible wherever they arise so appropriate measures can be taken to prevent significant numbers of human illnesses and deaths, and livestock losses. 

U.S. federal agencies -- particularly the U.S. Agency for International Development -- should spearhead efforts to develop this system and work with international partners to provide funding and technical assistance to build the expertise, equipment, and other components of zoonotic disease surveillance and response capabilities in countries worldwide, said the committee that wrote the report.  Species-jumping pathogens have caused more than 65 percent of infectious disease outbreaks in the past six decades, and have racked up more than $200 billion in economic losses worldwide over the past 10 years, the report notes.  The U.S. beef industry alone lost $11 billion over three years after the detection of one cow with "mad cow disease" in 2003. 

Greater integration of the human health and veterinary medicine sectors should be a key feature of this new system because the lack of coordination and communication between these groups results in missed opportunities to detect potential species-crossing pathogens and leads to less effective measures to contain diseases.  The report also recommends a fundamental shift in surveillance away from urgent, time-constrained reactions to individual diseases when they arise to a sustained focus on preventing the conditions for zoonotic agents to emerge and looking for signs of possible threats on an ongoing basis.

USAID should also lead an effort to identify sustainable funding sources to develop and maintain this new system.  Funding for surveillance traditionally has focused on individual diseases with disproportionate resources aimed at infections in humans compared with those in animals.  Moreover, development aid budgets tend to fluctuate with changes in leadership or priorities.  The effort to find sustainable funding should specifically consider a tax on internationally traded meat and meat products as one possible mechanism, although the pros and cons of all options must be weighed to determine which funding sources will work best, the report notes.

The U.S. government and other donor organizations should provide economic incentives and technical and medical assistance to encourage the reporting of outbreaks and to lessen the social and economic consequences.  Repercussions such as drops in trade and tourism and necessary culling of livestock can lead individuals and nations to conceal outbreaks. 

In addition, the report calls for the director general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to have the power to declare animal health emergencies and make public credible information it receives about animal disease outbreaks if national governments fail to provide information in a timely manner.  Greater transparency could improve control of animal diseases before they decimate livestock or wildlife or make large numbers of people sick.

"Developing an effective global system for detecting and responding to emerging zoonotic diseases is a tall order," said committee co-chair Gerald T. Keusch, associate provost for global health and associate dean for global health, School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston.  "However, given the political will and financial resources that have been marshaled time and again to respond to the individual 'disease du jour' as each has arisen, we believe it is possible to implement a sustainable, integrated human and veterinary disease surveillance system that is acceptable to all stakeholders.  And we must do so now." 

"Zoonotic diseases are like wildfires, which flare up unexpectedly and can take a significant toll on human and animal health and damage household livelihoods as well as national economies," said co-chair Marguerite Pappaioanou, executive director, Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges, Washington, D.C.  "All too often, our reaction to these outbreaks has been to try containing a wildfire after it has gotten out of control.  We need a system that enables us to prevent the conditions for these disease flare-ups to occur in the first place and to spot them earlier when we can take more effective and measured actions to limit the damage."   

Many obstacles have stymied the development of a more collaborative and robust disease surveillance system, the report says, including the low priority given to health issues by political leaders in some countries, lack of sufficient financing and coordinated governance, and lack of cooperation and integration among human and animal health experts. 

USAID and other international agencies need to establish an entity to coordinate nations' zoonotic disease detection and response efforts.  The United Nations' strategy of appointing a U.N. system influenza coordinator to collaborate with various individuals, groups, and countries involved in the avian influenza outbreak of 2003 could serve as a model, the report says.

The study was sponsored by USAID.  The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies.  They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter.  A committee roster follows.

Copies of Sustaining Global Surveillance and Response to Emerging Zoonotic Diseases are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu.  Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).

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[ This news release and report are available at http://national-academies.org ]

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

Division on Earth and Life Studies

Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources

and

INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE

Board on Global Health

Committee on Achieving Sustainable Global Capacity for Surveillance and

Response to Emerging Diseases of Zoonotic Origin

Gerald T. Keusch, M.D. (co-chair)

Associate Provost for Global Health

Boston University Medical Center, and

Associate Dean for Global Health

School of Public Health

Boston University

Boston

Marguerite Pappaioanou, D.V.M., Ph.D. (co-chair)

Executive Director

Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges

Washington, D.C.

Corrie Brown, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor

Department of Veterinary Pathology

College of Veterinary Medicine

University of Georgia

Athens

John S. Brownstein, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Children’s Hospital Boston

Harvard Medical School

Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Boston

Peter Daszak, Ph.D.

President

Consortium for Conservation Medicine

New York City

Cornelis de Haan

Consultant

Agriculture and Rural Development

World Bank

Washington, D.C.

Christl A. Donnelly, Sc.D.

Professor of Statistical Epidemiology

Public Health and Primary Care

Imperial College

London

David P. Fidler, J.D.

James L. Calamaras Professor of Law

School of Law

Indiana University

Bloomington

Kenneth H. Hill, Ph.D.

Professor of the Practice

of Global Health

Department of Global Health

and Population

School of Public Health

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

Ann Marie Kimball, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.P.

Professor of Epidemiology and Health Services, and

Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Biomedical and Health Informatics

School of Public Health and Community Medicine

University of Washington

Seattle

Ramanan Laxminarayan,   Ph.D., M.P.H.

Senior Fellow

Resources for the Future

Washington, D.C.

Terry F. McElwain, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Executive Director

Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, and

Director

Washington Animal Health Research Center

College of Veterinary Medicine

Washington State University

Pullman

Mark A. Nichter, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Regents Professor of Anthropology, and

Professor of Family and Community Medicine

Department of Anthropology

University of Arizona

Tucson

Mo Salman, D.V.M., M.P.V.M., Ph.D.

Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology

Animal Population Health Institute

College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Colorado State University

Fort Collins

Oyewale Tomori, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Vice Chancellor

Redeemer's University

Lagos, Nigeria

Kevin D. Walker, Ph.D.

Professor

National Food Safety and Toxicology Center

Michigan State University

East Lansing

Mark Woolhouse, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair

Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Center for Infectious Diseases

University of Edinburgh

Scotland

STAFF

Kimberly Scott, M.S.P.H.

Study Director