One Health

Health workers attending to an H7N9 avian flu patient in Wuhan, China, in 2017. CreditCreditAgence France-Presse -- Getty Images

CLICK HERE - WHO - Pandemic influenza preparedness Framework for the sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits (68 page .PDF document)

Despite an international agreement, U.S. health authorities still have not received H7N9 avian flu specimens from their Chinese counterparts.

nytimes.com - by Emily Baumgaertner - August 27, 2018

For over a year, the Chinese government has withheld lab samples of a rapidly evolving influenza virus from the United States — specimens needed to develop vaccines and treatments, according to federal health officials.

Despite persistent requests from government officials and research institutions, China has not provided samples of the dangerous virus, a type of bird flu called H7N9. In the past, such exchanges have been mostly routine under rules established by the World Health Organization.

CLICK HERE - WHO - R&D Blueprint - List of Blueprint priority diseases

telegraph.co.uk - by Alanna Shaikh - March 10, 2018

Over two days in early February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) convened an expert committee at its Geneva headquarters to consider the unthinkable.

The goal was to identify pathogens with the potential to spread and kill millions but for which there are currently no, or insufficient, countermeasures available . . . 

 . . . In addition to eight frightening but familiar diseases including Ebola, Zika, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the list included a ninth global threat: Disease X.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Mysterious 'Disease X' Could Be The Next Deadly Global Epidemic, WHO Warns

Ebola virus budding from surface of cells, from a scanning electron micrograph.  Image credits: NIAID

CLICK HERE - The Global Virome Project

insidescience.org - by Benjamin Plackett - February 22, 2018

 . . . In an article published in Science magazine today, Daszak and a group of like-minded scientists described a new initiative, called the Virome project, that would identify and catalogue hundreds of thousands of yet-to-be-discovered viruses found in wild animals.

The team estimates that there are about 1.6 million undiscovered virus types and that somewhere between 631,000-827,000 could potentially spill over into humans. The viruses are found mostly in wild mammals.

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documents.worldbank.org - 29 January 2018

Abstract

Public health systems have critical and clear relevance to the World Bank’s twin goals of poverty eradication and boosting shared prosperity. In particular, they are impacted by, and must respond to,significant threats at human-animal-environment interface. Most obvious are the diseases shared between humans and animals (“zoonotic” diseases), which comprise more than 60 percent of known human infectious pathogens; but also aspects of vector-borne disease, food and water safety and security, and antimicrobial resistance. Public health systems must therefore be resilient and prepared to face existing and future disease threats at the human-animal-environment interface. the Operational Framework provides a strong orientation to One Health to assist users in understanding and implementing it, from rationale to concrete guidance for its application. Six core chapters are included, supported by annexes diving deeper into operational tools and recent World Bank alignment with One Health topics, and a glossary that explains key terms, including interpretations specific to the Operational Framework.