US funds pandemic animal disease action
The money will go to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UN), which is attempting to tackle animal disease in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
FAO and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have worked in partnership on controlling animal diseases and managing related human health threats for over a decade. USAID financial backing for this work now amounts to $320m since 2004, with the latest funding covering the 2015-19 period.
Monitoring and surveillance
The new funds will support monitoring and surveillance, epidemiological studies, prevention and control activities as well as improving veterinary capacities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and promoting links between animal health specialists and the public health sector.
“Millions of people rely on livestock for survival, income and nutrition, and their livelihoods must be protected,” said FAO director-general José Graziano da Silva. “This shows how important transboundary diseases are for FAO and the UN system, and how much more important they will be in in the future if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.
The new USAID funding will enable FAO to conduct studies in West and East Africa to identify potential reservoirs of carriers of Ebola, and Ebola-like diseases, and shed light on the possible role of livestock, if any, in transmitting the disease.
Better understanding
Meanwhile, better understanding the epidemiology of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) will be the focus of activities in the Horn of Africa and the Near East.
In West Africa, the funding will give a boost to FAO prevention and emergency response efforts to stem the spread of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza – known to have caused human disease and fatalities – through prevention, detection and control efforts aimed at eliminating the disease in the poultry sector.
Over the past several decades, population growth, agricultural expansion, and the rise of globe-spanning food supply chains have dramatically altered how diseases emerge, jump species boundaries, and spread, FAO studies have shown.
