Animal Ownership and Touching Enrich the Context of Social Contacts Relevant to the Spread of Human Infectious Diseases.

ABSTRACT: Many human infectious diseases originate from animals or are transmitted through animal vectors. We aimed to identify factors that are predictive of ownership and touching of animals, assess whether animal ownership influences social contact behavior, and estimate the probability of a major zoonotic outbreak should a transmissible influenza-like pathogen be present in animals, all in the setting of a densely populated European country. A diary-based social contact survey (n = 1768) was conducted in Flanders, Belgium, from September 2010 until February 2011. Many participants touched pets (46%), poultry (2%) or livestock (2%) on a randomly assigned day, and a large proportion of participants owned such animals (51%, 15% and 5%, respectively). Logistic regression models indicated that larger

SUBMITTER: Kifle YW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4508096 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature