WHO declares rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency

 

WHO declares rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency. The WHO declared monkeypox a global health emergency. 

 The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed. The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Europe is the epicenter of the outbreak. Right now, men who have sex with men are the community at highest risk. 

The WHO chief said the global risk is moderate, but the threat is high in Europe. Monkeypox is unlikely to disrupt international trade or travel right now, the WHO chief said. 

 The World Health Organization has activated its highest alert level for the growing monkeypox outbreak, declaring the virus a public health emergency of international concern. The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed to prevent the virus from spreading further and potentially escalating into a pandemic.

Toolkit helps identify and respond to monkeypox exposures among health workers.

 

Toolkit helps identify and respond to monkey pox exposures among health workers.Massachusetts General Hospital developed a toolkit that can help identify and respond to potential monkey pox exposures among health care personnel, researchers reported in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. 

 The toolkit uses an enhanced version of REDCap, a web-based software platform that supports survey and data collection.

GARC: Rabies surveillance workshop, the one health approach.

 

GARC participating in the "Rabies Surveillance Workshop: One Health Approach towards Rabies elimination in Namibia" workshop. The meeting has been arranged by WOAH, in collaboration with various local stakeholders.

Dr Nehemia Hedimbi (DVS, Namibia) demonstrates the outputs of the RVT tool to the workshop participants. Human and animal health professionals used the GARC surveillance tools to capture information using case studies. The exercise allowed users to experience the tools, but also learn what data the other sectors routinely collect.

#Lagos #rabies # face of rabies control and elimination  Certificate of recognition to #Lagos for contributions to global rabies elimination efforts.     #kick rabies out of #Lagos. #Agege

Rabies: dont ignore a bite or scratch.

 

 

 Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life .    Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life . 

 100% of human cases of rabies are preventable. 

 59,000 people die of rabies every year. 

95% of human rabies death occurs in Africa and Asia.

Health links are key to preventing future pandemics.

Health links are key to preventing future pandemics.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that zoonotic diseases – infections that pass from animals to humans – can present tremendous threats to global health. More than 70% of emerging and reemerging pathogens originate from animals. 

That probably includes the SARS CoV-2 virus, which scientists widely believe originated in bats. There are still questions about specifically where the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged. But experts across the globe agree that communities can take steps to reduce the risk of future spillovers. 

A key is for veterinarians, doctors and scientists to work together, recognizing how closely connected human health is with that of animals and of the habitats that we share – an approach known as One Health. 

 To prevent new pandemics, scientists need to identify specific locations where viruses are most likely to make the jump from animals to humans. In turn, this requires understanding how human behaviors – from deforestation to fossil fuel combustion to conflict to cultural activities – contribute to spillover risks.

Importance of One Health for COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

Importance of One Health for COVID-19 and Future Pandemics. More than 400 animals from 29 countries have been reported infected with COVID-19, including nearly 300 animals in the United States, as well as thousands of mink. 

 One Health Day, a global campaign that highlights the need for a One Health approach to address shared health threats by recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, and our environment. 

This approach is more important than ever as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is a zoonotic virus, which means it can spread between people and animals.

 As more animals are reported infected with the COVID-19 virus, it becomes increasingly clear that a One Health approach is crucial to address new disease threats that affect both people and animals.

Public health workers: Stopping sickness before it starts.

Public health workers: Stopping sickness before it starts. What is a public health professional? Behind the doctors and nurses that treat the sick are the civil servants and volunteers that prevent disease outbreaks or the onset of chronic illness. Public health workers monitor and maintain a community’s collective health through public outreach, policy recommendations and education initiatives that encourage citizens to adopt better health practices. What do they do? Their efforts go beyond encouraging children to wash their hands (though that could be part of a broader campaign to fight contagious diseases). Public health officials address a range of health issues from childhood nutrition to HIV testing. They use their acumen as communicators, organizers, policymakers, researchers and educators to improve community well-being.

Public Private Partnership : a platform for livestock economics and globalization of veterinary medicine.

Disease, Livestock Economics, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine offers a new and exciting comparative approach to the complex interrelationships of microbes, markets, and medicine in the global economy. 

It draws upon fourteen case studies from the Americas, western Europe, and the European and Japanese colonies to illustrate how the rapid growth of the international trade in animals through the nineteenth century engendered the spread of infectious diseases, sometimes with devastating consequences for indigenous pastoral societies. 

 At different times and across much of the globe, livestock epidemics have challenged social order and provoked state interventions, which were sometimes opposed by pastoralists.

 The intensification of agriculture has transformed environments, with consequences for animal and human health. But the last two centuries have also witnessed major changes in the way societies have conceptualized diseases and sought to control them. 

The rise of germ theories and the discovery of vaccines against some infections made it possible to move beyond the blunt tools of animal culls and restrictive quarantines of the past.

 Nevertheless, these older methods have remained important to strategies of control and prevention, as demonstrated during the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain in 2001. 

 From the late nineteenth century, advances in veterinary technologies afforded veterinary scientists a new professional status and allowed them to wield greater political influence.

 In the European and Japanese colonies, state support for biomedical veterinary science often led to coercive policies for managing the livestock economies of the colonized peoples. 

   In western Europe and North America, public responses to veterinary interventions were often unenthusiastic and reflected a latent distrust of outside interference and state regulation. 

Politics, economics, and science inform these essays on the history of animal diseases and the expansion in veterinary medicine. read

ATOPIC DERMATITIS(AD)

A new study from researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, have uncovered important insights about the association of AD in dogs compared to humans. How AD arises isn't yet fully understood, but this study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology and sheds more light on atopic dermatitis. Atopic dermatitis (AD), a chronic inflammatory skin condition and the most common form of eczema, is estimated to afflict as much as 10 percent of the U.S. population, and is much more common now than it was 50 years ago. Veterinary clinical estimates also show that approximately 10 percent of dogs have atopic dermatitis. Canine AD shares important features of the human version. For example, in both humans and dogs AD has been linked to abnormal blooms of Staphyloccocus bacteria on the skin -- mostly Staphyloccocus aureus in humans, and Staphyloccocus pseudintermedius in dogs. The research team, comprised of veterinary dermatologists, microbiologists, pathologists, and primary scientists, tracked the bacterial populations, or "microbiomes," on dogs' skin, and key properties of the skin's barrier function during an occurrence of AD, and again after standard treatment with antibiotics. During the flare, researchers observed a sharp decrease in the diversity of the skin bacterial population as certain bacterial species proliferated, along with a decrease in the skin's protective barrier. With antibiotic therapy, both measures returned to normal levels. In both canine and human atopic dermatitis there is a similar relationship among skin barrier function, the immune system, and microbes, even if the individual microbe species aren't identical. The insights gained from this study and others like it will allow one day to treat this condition by altering the skin's microbiome without antibiotics. Thirty-two dogs (15 with canine AD, and 17 without) from Penn Vet's Ryan Hospital were enrolled in the study. On three occasions -- first during AD flares in the affected dogs, then after 4-6 weeks of targeted antibiotics, and finally 4-6 weeks after treatment concluded -- the team took swabs from several areas of skin on the affected dogs. They surveyed the microbiomes of these samples by amplifying and sequencing copies of a key bacterial gene whose DNA sequence is distinct for different bacterial species. Samples from the dogs with ongoing AD had almost ten times the proportion of Staphylococcus species, compared to the control dogs. Corynebacterium species also rose, as they typically do in humans with AD. A standard measure of the diversity of the dogs' skin microbiomes also decreased sharply, indicating that the abnormal bacterial proliferation -- chiefly from S. pseudintermedius -- had crowded out other, harmless or potentially beneficial bacterial species. At the second visit, immediately following completion of antibiotic therapy, the abundance of Staphyloccocus and Corynebacterium on the skin of affected dogs and the diversity of their skin microbiome had returned almost to the levels seen in the control dogs. Those measures remained largely the same in the third visit, after antibiotic therapy was finished. Impairment in the skin's ability to work as a "barrier" to keep moisture in and harmful bacteria out is considered a possible factor in triggering or advancing AD. Results showed that the low-bacterial-diversity state of AD flares -- corresponding to lesions of AD on the skin -- correlated with impairments in the skin barrier, as indicated by a standard test of the water loss rate through the skin This investigation is a prime example of the One Health approach to research, a recognition that we're dealing with the same disease processes in animals and in humans. Materials from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Public Private Partnerships to limit disease spread due to global travelling.

A new study from a team at the University of Arizona in the US has found that international travel – along with trade – can be listed as being among the most efficient methods of spreading infectious diseases.

   This is due to the fact that people sick with communicable infections may unknowingly board planes and spread their illnesses to both fellow passengers and the residents of their destination country. Led by Charles Perrings, a professor of environmental economics at the university, the team behind the research cited the recent Ebola outbreak as an example – while a global pandemic did not occur, and the majority of the 8,000 people who died from the disease were from the outbreak’s source countries in West Africa, a man from Liberia did become patient zero in the US and later died from Ebola. 

 Two of his attending nurses also contracted the disease, although they later recovered. While this was a thankfully small-scale example, it can be considered a microcosm of what a larger epidemic or pandemic might look like. 

 The research paper also pointed towards international trade, mentioning the hoof and mouth outbreak that cost the government of the UK billions, and other diseases such as swine and avian flu.

 In terms of solutions, Perrings suggested addressing these issues ‘at the source’, and confronting those behind the import and export of potentially dangerous materials with the risks. 

 “The recent Ebola outbreak made us realize that we are all just a plane ride away from exposure to emerging infectious diseases,” said Perrings. 

“The more trade grows as a proportion of global production, the more likely it is that diseases will be spread through trade, and the higher the economic cost of resulting trade bans. What is at risk is the food we eat, the fibres we wear and build with, and the fuels we burn. In addition, many infectious diseases that affect animals also affect people. 

Zoonoses like SARS, MERS, HIV, AIDS [and] highly pathogenic avian influenza all originated in wild animals and were then spread person-to-person through trade and travel.” He went on to say: “There are two problems to address. One is that disease spread is an unintended (external) effect of trade. 

To solve this problem exporters and importers need to be confronted with the risks they impose on consumers. The other is that the control of infectious disease is a public good – the benefits it offers are freely available to all, and so will be under supplied if left to the market. 

To solve this problem, we need to undertake co-operative, collective control of infectious diseases at the source.” He suggested financial incentives for risk reduction in developing countries and establishing a global fund to combat and control infectious diseases. 

Currently, countries have the right to act defensively in their own interests once a disease is introduced, controlling the outbreak and working to reduce the possibility of reinfection by banning trade with countries that pose a risk. This, however, will not stop new diseases emerging, said Perrings: 

“The One Health Initiative suggests that what is needed is co-operative collective action to reduce risk at the source. This requires a partnership between the rich countries that have the resources to fund global prevention, and the poor countries where disease is most likely to emerge. 

The management of infectious diseases of animals and plants, like the management of infectious diseases of people, is now a global problem that requires global solutions. 

This in turn requires a more strongly co-ordinated and co-operative approach than is currently allowed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement.” culled from international travel and health insurance journal.

SEX-REASSIGNMENT IN VET PRACTICE.

Veterinary practice and human medicine share a lot of procedures and new surgical theories do cut across board.The one world one health initiative is a life -saver no doubt,but there are certain procedures that are so off limit. Cosmetic surgeries has its place in both practices,but sexual re-assignment come on!!!. I was shocked to my marrows when i heard the story by Now 8 news; about a New Hampshire woman who shot her local vet for refusing to do a sex-reassignment for a stud to change to a bitch,now this is going too far.We need to can this before it swallows our pets. The Now 8 news reported she is schizophrenic: read more here,http://now8news.com/woman-shoots-veterinarian-after-he-refuses-to-do-sex-re-assignment-surgery-on-her-dog/ photo credit; Now 8 News.

ONE WORLD, ONE HEALTH.

One world,one health; the veterinarian and medical doctors working together on the avian influenza virus outbreak.

 Today,i went with a team of investigators from the federal ministry of health and NVRI to a farm that recently had the bird flu outbreak.

The team had to ask questions and collect samples. one world,one health,one medicine.