Drivers for emerging issues in animal and plant health

Richardson, Jane; Lockhart, Caryl; Pongolini, Stefano; Karesh, William B.; Baylis, Matthew; Goldberg, Tony; Slingenbergh, Jan; Gale, Paul; Venturini, Tommaso; Catchpole, Mike; de Balogh, Katinka; Pautasso, Marco; Broglia, Alessandro; Berthe, Franck; Schans, Jan; Poppy, Guy

The example of Ebola virus disease in Western Africa and its dramatic consequences reminds us about the need for emergency preparedness and a response to detect the emergence of outbreaks in a timely manner for their rapid containment, mitigating their devastating effects on the society at large in the affected countries. Such events continue, as evidenced by the recent outbreak of Zika virus in the Americas. Emergency preparedness and timely detection are, however, distinct from the identification of emerging risks, which, in essence, is based on forecast. The lack of understanding of the drivers that lead to such an outbreak, their spatial and temporal heterogeneity, as well as their interconnections across the affected region and even beyond, may hamper our ability to prevent similar future outbreaks. It also reminds us about the urgent need to explicitly take into account the interactions between environmental, epidemiological and socio-economic factors.