Periodic global One Health threats update

Reperant, Leslie A.; MacKenzie, John; Osterhaus, Albert D.M.E.

The vast majority of emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic in nature [3, 4] . Often, they escape their natural wildlife reservoirs and infect captive or domestic animals and humans upon crossspecies transmission. While the majority of zoonotic pathogens spread limitedly among humans, occasionally some do evolve the ability to efficiently transmit [5] . These may cause devastating epidemics, if not pandemics, and may establish as novel human pathogens. Emerging infectious diseases of animals likewise have typically the ability to cross species barriers and invade new host species. In contrast, introduction of pathogens into new geographical areas and climate change play an essential role in the emergence of plant diseases, and the hybridization of plant pathogens that are not naturally sympatric is repeatedly reported to be involved in plant disease emergence events [2] . The consequences of emerging pathogens in newly infected species, be it wild or domestic, or in new geographical areas, can have dire repercussions on human welfare, for example, through the disruption of ecosystem services or from large agricultural economic losses [2, 6] . As such, emerging infectious diseases are One Health threats to the global community.