By John Butcher
Staff writer
As destructive as the Covid-19 pandemic has been, it is unlikely to be the last of its kind, with the potential increasing for viruses to cross from animals to humans.
Some scientists and policymakers ‘ among them a team based at Duke Kunshan in China and Duke University in the United States ‘ have now turned their attention to preventing a similar event happening again. They believe a concept called One Health, a multidisciplinary approach to healthcare that would involve cooperation between a range of global actors, from farmers to politicians and scientists, could be the answer.
‘What we have seen in the past is policy being created in ‘silos’ and not integrating across the domains. This may cause gaps in funding or result in the prioritization of only one domain,’ said Benjamin Anderson, an assistant professor of science and global health at Duke Kunshan.
A One Health approach, in contrast, would involve collaboration and ‘capture transmission risk across all three domains of risk ‘ human, animal and environment.’
Ben Anderson (left) uses a bio-aerosol sampling machine to search for viruses in the air at a swine farm
The threat of pandemics is on the rise, according to Greg Gray, a professor of medicine, global health and environmental health at Duke. The threat is driven by multiple risk factors that we can do little about, including rapid movement of people, animals and goods, increased animal and human population densities in close proximity, land use changes, and climate change, Gray said.
Before the appearance of Covid-19, there were a series of other outbreaks including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS), which killed 774 people between 2002 and 2004; a swine-like influenza virus that emerged in Mexico in 2009, causing an estimated 60.8 million illnesses globally and at least 12,469 deaths by the end of 2010 in the U.S. alone; and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS), which emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and had killed 881 people across 27 countries as of October last year (it continues to circulate).
There has been a ‘whack-a-mole’ approach to tackling the issue, with institutions and industries working separately and sometimes with competing interests, according to Gray. The main players ‘ including governments and international agencies ‘ have focused attention on containing the latest outbreak without thinking longer term.
The shear devastation caused by Covid-19 has shown the failure of that approach and begun to turn attention to the possibility of more-lasting efforts that could halt pandemics or at least leave countries better prepared to deal with them.
The approach advocated by researchers from the Duke One Health team would aim to pre-empt another pandemic through a collaborative multidisciplinary approach on a local, national and international level. In practical terms, that would mean individuals, agencies and institutions that may have competing aims in some areas, working together for a common good.
In the case of preventing another virus pandemic, it would involve engaging a broad range of actors, including farmers, market traders, veterinarians, scientists and politicians, to create a network that could monitor the emergence of viruses, target the ones that pose a threat for further research, and develop infrastructure to provide treatments and vaccines, and deploy them to the public if needed.
Duke One Health is already engaged in the first stage of the process via 30 projects spread across 14 countries. It uses a variety of methods, including bio-aerosol sampling (which involves using machinery to extract pathogens from the air), to discover and monitor viruses in disease hotspots such as live animal markets, and offers training to local scientists in surveilling for potential biological threats.
With more than 1.7 million viruses in existence and in excess of 6 million animals, monitoring everything would be a mammoth task, but Duke One Health believes costs and resources can be minimized by focusing efforts where they will be most effective, in areas with a high density of people and animals in close proximity, Gray said.
This would make the approach more palatable in terms of cost and therefore more sustainable, he said.
The length of time it takes for a virus to mutate to pass from animal to human and then to become transmissible again between people usually takes decades, meaning there would be a significant chance of halting viruses before they begin to spread. But if they did, there would also be the research and infrastructure in place to prevent a global pandemic.
Interest in a One Health approach is rising. The World Health Organization already applies it to certain health programs, and the U.K. and U.S. governments have adopted the approach to deal with some complex problems such as food safety.
A change of gear to use a One Health approach to tackle virus pandemics would be a logical shift to make, according to Anderson.
‘I think we will likely see more discussion of how to apply this approach across national and international organizations as we eventually move beyond the Covid-19 pandemic,’ he said.
