Whence the next pandemic? The intersecting global geography of the animal-human interface, poor health systems and air transit centrality reveals conduits for high-impact spillover.

ABSTRACT: The health and economic impacts of infectious disease pandemics are catastrophic as most recently manifested by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The emerging infections that lead to substantive epidemics or pandemics are typically zoonoses that cross species boundaries at vulnerable points of animal-human interface. The sharing of space between wildlife and humans, and their domesticated animals, has dramatically increased in recent decades and is a key driver of pathogen spillover. Increasing animal-human interface has also occurred in concert with both increasing globalisation and failing health systems, resulting in a trifecta with dire implications for human and animal health. Nevertheless, to date we lack a geographical description of this trifecta that can be applied strategicall

SUBMITTER: Walsh MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7543735 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature