Human–livestock contacts and their relationship to transmission of zoonotic pathogens, a systematic review of literature

Klous, Gijs; Huss, Anke; Heederik, Dick J.J.; Coutinho, Roel A.

Especially in developing countries, transmission of micro-organisms can occur from live animals or via blood products from slaughtering practises within the home setting, but the actual transmission pathways are often unknown. In these countries livestock keeping is common practise for many families and animals are frequently kept in the home backyard for egg, milk or meat production [16, 17, [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] 18, [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] . Backyard poultry keeping has been linked to Avian Influenza transmission on many occasions. This was found by Thornson et al. performing interviews in Vietnam, asking for poultry contact and flulike illness [77] , modelled by Van Kerkhove et al. in Cambodia after interviewing people regarding their poultry contacts [78] , and shown among Egyptian women by Kandeel and colleagues performing a risk factor analysis of all suspected Avian Influenza cases in Egypt [80] .