World-class scientists from the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium are available for interview and to comment on the science of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases, the poverty impacts of these diseases and the implications for policy making.
Blogs and media coverage
Below is a selection of our blogs and media coverage:
For blogs and media coverage of our One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing symposium please go to our symposium page.
7 June 2017 – 3Ps for global disease challenges: how to build fruitful conversations
A blog looking at modelling approaches by Ian Scoones published on On Health.
8 June 2016 – Celebrating impact: How multidisciplinary One Health research produced results for real change in the real world
A blog by Naomi Marks on Nature Soapbox Science.
11 April 2016 – Land, politics and tsetse flies: changing disease landscapes in Zimbabwe
The first in a series of a blogs by Ian Scoones in The Zimbabwean.
23 March 2016 – How to control Rift Valley fever and support people facing meat bans
Consortium partner Salome Bukachi of the University of Nairobi talks to SciDev about the importance of including social science in health projects.
22 March 2016 – The hidden dangers of irrigation in Kenya
Consortium partner Bernard Bett from ILRI is interviewed by SciDev on the trade-offs between food production and disease.
18 February 2016
Kevin Bardosh had ‘First Ebola, now Zika: the inconvenient truths about battling emerging diseases’ published on BioMed Central‘s On Health blog.
January 2016
Research published by co-PI Professor Kate Jones at UCL and others in The American Naturalist detailing a risk map for bats and disease attracted much media attention, including a SciDev podcast and the following articles:
- ‘Zoonotic disease’, in The Economist.
- ‘West Africa at highest rate of bat-to-human virus spread, study finds’, on the Voice of America website.
- ‘Map shows hotspots for bat-0human virus transmission risk’, on Science Newsline.
Kate and co-researcher Liam Brierely also wrote a STEPS blog, ‘Bats, people and a complex web of disease transmission’ about their findings.
12 October 2015 – El Niño predictions signal urgent need to prepare for epidemic in eastern Africa
Bernard Blog contributes a blog to PLOS Translational Global Health.
5 August 2015 – Ebola, bats and evidence-based policy informing Ebola policy
The Drivers of Disease Ghana team related the project’s findings to national debates and policy surrounding the Ebola crisis, in their article published in the Forum section of EcoHealth.
21 July 2015 – Welcoming the medics to the One Health movement
Naomi Marks contributed a STEPS Centre blog.
31 March 2015 – Preparing for zoonotic surprise
Victor Galaz contributed a blog to Lancet Global Health.
15 January 2015 – The Lassa super-spreaders and lessons from 17th century Milan
Gianni Lo Iacono contributed to the Lancet Global Health blog.
14 October 2014 – Ebola: Difficult questions for development
Ian Scoones contributed to the Huffington Post blog.
1 August 2014 – Why is West Africa’s Ebola outbreak so hard to contain?
Listen to Melissa Leach, interviewed (at 14.30hr) on CBC’s radio strand The Current.
30 July 2014 – Why some Ebola-ravaged villages are resistant to international aid
Melissa Leach helped inform this Huffington Post blog.
20 July 2014 – Science in Action
Listen to a seven-minute interview on the BBC World Service with Melissa Leach on how anthropologists can help slow down the world’s worst Ebola epidemic.
19 June 2014 – Tackling the Ebola epidemic in west Africa: why we need a holistic approach
Naomi Marks blogged at The Guardian‘s Global Development Professionals Network on a One Health approach to zoonotic diseases.
3 April 2014 – Ebola in Guinea – people, patterns and puzzles
Melissa Leach’s blog on how multidisciplinary work can help our understanding and management of emerging zoonoses was published by The Lancet Global Health .
18 January 2014 – On the zoonose
An article in The Economist cited Delia Grace’s work on the rise of zoonoses accompanying the intensification of livestock farming.
26 November 2013 – The next global killer
Kate Jones is interviewed by science journalist Alok Jha for a BBC Radio 4 documentary on zoonoses and the possibility of future deadly pandemics.
19 November 2013 – Fruit bats harbour more deadly viruses
James Wood was interviewed by BBC News Science and Environment about his research on henipaviruses in fruit bats in Africa.
10 November 2013 – A deadly disease could travel at jet speed around the world. How do we stop it in time?
An article in The Observer newspaper on the threat of a new global pandemic by Guardian science journalist Alok Jha outlined the work of James Wood and his team looking at bats and henipavirus in Ghana.
28 May 2013 – Study highlights threat of African horse sickness in UK
An article in Horsetalk interviewed Gianni Lo Iacono and James Wood on the findings of their research into African horse sickness which has potential applications in mapping and responding to the spread of other diseases, including Rift Valley fever.
21 May 2013 – African cities test the limit of living with livestock
Delia Grace was interviewed for an entry on the health implications of living close to livestock on The Salt, a blog from the National Public Radio (NPR).
10 April 2013 – How multidisciplinary work was made meaningful for me
Gianni Lo Iacono contributed to Nature‘s Soapbox Science blog with a piece about his field trip to Sierra Leone and the challenges of multidisciplinary working.
7 April 2013 – Rural Kenyans are bringing their cows with them to the cities. What could go wrong?
Delia Grace was interviewed in a feature in The Atlantic about the danger of diseases when livestock are brought into new, unplanned towns in Africa.
21 February 2013 – Lassa Fever: why there are more public health questions than answers
Lina Moses blogged on The Guardian‘s Global Development Professionals Network about her experiences working on Lassa fever in Sierra Leone and suggests why, 40 years after the reservoir for the Lassa virus was first identified, little progress in preventing the disease has been made.
11 December 2012 – Tackling animal diseases to protect human health
James Wood talked about the Drivers of Disease consortium in this EMBO Reports Science & Society article which considers the inextricable link between human, animal and ecosystem health.
16 November 2012 – Fighting the fly: Drivers of disease in the Zambezi valley
Ian Scoones wrote in The Zimbabwean on the relationships between the testse fly, livestock, wildlife and people and the potentially dangerous consequences. Ian also carried this on his blog Zimbabweland.
12 October 2012 – How to stop zoonoses spreading – Don’t keep chickens under the bed
Delia Grace blogged on managing the health risks which can accompany urban livestock keeping on The Guardian‘s Global Development site.
1 October 2012 – Dislike of multidisciplinary work ‘limits development‘
Delia Grace was quoted in a SciDev.Net article reporting on a discussion at the Agricultural Research for Development: Innovations and Incentives conference in Sweden.
23 July 2012 – Are environmental changes spreading Rift Valley and Lassa fevers?
Delia Grace blogged on The Guardian‘s Global Development site on shifts in environmental practice thought to be affecting the transmission of zoonoses.
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