Zoonotic diseases such as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) have an impact across societies. A farmer can quickly lose hundreds of chickens, for example, if one bird from the flock contracts HPAI. The disease, also known as bird flu, has proven more than 50 percent fatal to humans as well when the H5N1 virus is transmitted from birds.

Since HPAI often strikes poor, highly populated areas, the first illnesses and deaths can portend a fast-spreading public health risk.

Other zoonotic diseases—which affect both humans and animals—pose similar hazards, including far-reaching socioeconomic consequences. Preparing for and responding to them, therefore, requires an approach integrated across society, according to DAI’s Dr. Gary Mullins, Technical Area Manager for Infectious Diseases.

Mullins represented DAI on March 9-12 in Miami, Florida, at the 14^th International Congress of Infectious Diseases, where he presented a poster titled, “‘One World, One Health’ in Practice: Integrating Public Health and Veterinary Curricula on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Africa.” The event convened thought leaders to share the latest discoveries, results, and issues at the forefront of this technical field.

“Zoonotic diseases have immediate implications for human and animal health, of course, but also can impact food security as well as economies on a local, regional, and international scale, such as by causing a cease in trade,” said Mullins, Project Team Leader for the DAI-led Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“In the worst case, should avian influenza evolve into a disease easily transmitted from human to human, as some pathologists fear, preparation and response to a possible pandemic would need to be worldwide, and simultaneously have to address avian as well as human populations,” Mullins continued. “[STOP AI’s] approach to preparing communities and regions for zoonotic diseases, therefore, is an integrated one.”

Mullins presentation described how STOP AI’s formal training integrates medical, veterinary, and public health disciplines to address emerging zoonotic disease.

Under STOP AI, training modules—on HPAI epidemiology, risk assessment, surveillance, outbreak response, biosafety, and biosecurity—are integrated by teams of veterinary, medical, public health, and socioeconomics professionals to ensure interaction between the disciplines at all stages of planning, surveillance, and response to HPAI.

In Africa, the STOP AI method has been tried and embraced, and will be piloted this spring by the University of Ghana’s School of Public Health in an integrated core curriculum as a master’s degree course elective.