What do bubonic plague, Lyme disease, Ebola, Marburg disease, Nipah, sleeping sickness, Lassa fever, avian influenza, Western equine encephalitis, SARS and COVID-19 have in common? All are zoonotic diseases, ones that have jumped from animals to humans. Not all have turned into pandemics – where a disease spreads across multiple countries – but some certainly…
Pandemics: why a new science is needed
Project pioneers innovative workshops with Myanmar pig farmers
In advance of World Zoonoses Day 2020, this year on Monday, 6 July, we are sharing a story from the Myanmar Pig Partnership project which has been taking a One Health approach to exploring the links between disease risk and changing pig production and consumption patterns in Myanmar. The Myanmar Pig Partnership, an interdisciplinary project…
Enhancing red meat safety through ‘street-level diplomacy’ in Tanzania
Rising meat consumption in Tanzania – and indeed across low- and middle-income countries – presents new challenges and opportunities for health and development and we have been considering these as part of our social science input into the ZELS-funded ‘Hazards Associated with Zoonotic enteric pathogens in Emerging Livestock’ (HAZEL) meat pathways project, part of the…
Disciplinary identities and other barriers to advancing interdisciplinary working
By Professor Linda Waldman, Institute of Development Studies, Professor Joanne Sharp, University of Glasgow, and Professor James Wood, University of Cambridge. The following blog was first published on the PLoS ONE blog ‘EveryONE’. Interdisciplinary research is becoming increasingly commonplace. In recent years, climate change, ecosystem sustainability, planetary boundaries and zoonotic disease outbreaks have in particular…
Antimicrobial resistance and behaviour: an interview with Ayako Ebata
Agricultural economist Dr Ayako Ebata was interviewed in The AMR Studio, a podcast dedicated to interdisciplinary research into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) produced by Uppsala University. Dr Ebata specialises in value chain analysis and as part of her work for the Myanmar Pig Partnership she is considering value chains in the context of antimicrobial resistance and…
Freebook: Pathways to Health and Sustainability
The second in a series of FreeBooks from Routledge, Pathways to Health and Sustainability, is available to download free of charge. The FreeBooks allow open access, for the first time, to chapters from the STEPS Centre’s ‘Pathways to Sustainability’ book series, now numbering nearly 20 books. This new collection draws on four books in the…
One Health Day: why tackling human health isn’t enough
One Health Day, on Friday 3 November 2017, draws attention to the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health. More than 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases affecting people are zoonoses – originating in wildlife or livestock. Their spread is driven by climate change, land-use change and the massive expansion of towns and cities,…
Why will no one listen to the pig farmers of Yangon?
Sitting in a pig farmer’s house in the Yangon region of Myanmar, I heard a question I’d heard many times before from backyard farmers: “What will your project provide us with?” It was my last month of a year in Myanmar, undertaking fieldwork for the social science component of the Myanmar Pig Partnership, a project looking…
Results of four-year zoonoses research showcased in One Health ‘Special Issue’
Infectious diseases traceable to animals are driven by climate change, land-use change and the massive expansion of towns and cities, according to contributors to a paper in a major new output from the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, a STEPS Centre led project.
One Health: are we doing it wrong?
International scientific meetings are great for many reasons. But I also found myself profoundly frustrated and disappointed when I attended the 4th International One Health Congress, One Health EcoHealth 2016, in Melbourne recently.