The newly launched One Health Research, Education and Outreach Centre in Africa (OHRECA) at ILRI will contribute towards addressing neglected zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food safety and emerging infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. Continue reading
In a new book chapter, Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Natural Resources Institute, of the University of Greenwich, in the UK, says animal diseases are a threat not only to the livestock sector of southern Africa, but also to its economy (via reduced benefits from the region’s wildlife resources), and also to human health in the region. Continue reading
A new European Union-funded ‘Livestock Production Systems in Zimbabwe’ (LIPS-Zim) project is working to increase agricultural productivity in the country’s agro-ecological Zones IV and V. It is promoting the adoption of climate-relevant innovations in livestock production systems and improving surveillance and control of livestock diseases. Launched on 1 January 2020, the LIPS-Zim project is implemented … Continue reading
A scientific assessment from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and ILRI finds that unless countries take dramatic steps to curb zoonotic contagions, global outbreaks like COVID-19 will become more common. The assessment, Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission, published on 6 July, describes how 60 per cent of the 1,400 microbes known to infect humans originated in animals. Continue reading
Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty addressed the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) at its latest Town Hall meeting Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine and ILRI patron Peter Doherty discussed vaccines, herd immunity, and policy responses to COVID-19 with Director General Jimmy Smith at ILRI’s weekly digital town hall meeting on 29 May 2020. … Continue reading
In recent years in the pastoral areas of developing countries, One Health is gaining increasing credibility and visibility as an approach that can combine interventions for both human and animals. However, relatively little attention has been given thus far to the environmental health component including of the resource base – rangelands. Continue reading
In an effort to support animal disease surveillance in Uganda, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Germany in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), facilitated a five-day participatory disease surveillance training of 48 animal health experts in Uganda on 9-13 March 2020. Continue reading
In a spirited and at times defiantly hopeful presentation at the International Livestock Research Institute’s (ILRI) weekly digital town hall meeting on 14 May, David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General on COVID-19, called the virus causing the disease ‘beastly’ and ‘single-minded’, but said that the pandemic ultimately represents … Continue reading
The acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has written that the ongoing tragedy of COVID-19 is a sort of global X-ray, exposing the weak or broken elements under the surface of the world’s economic and health systems. One of those elements, arguably, is a failure to bring enough financial and institutional resources to bear on One … Continue reading
In this post, Bernard Bett, Delia Randolph and John McDermott argue that not only are pandemics not over, they may be increasing in frequency; and while most originated in Asia in the past, Africa may be poised to become an important source of so-called ‘zoonotic pathogens’—with its population growth, rapid urbanization and rising global integration offering promising vectors for outbreaks. Continue reading
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