BMJ  2005;331:1214-1215 (26 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7527.1214

Editorial

A walk on the wild side—emerging wildlife diseases

They increasingly threaten human and animal health

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Emerging infectious diseases have been creeping up the research agenda since at least 1992, when the US Institute of Medicine defined them as infectious diseases that have recently increased in incidence or geographical range, recently been discovered, or are caused by newly evolved pathogens.¹ Diseases that have recently moved into new species can be added to this defining list.² More recently, the emergence of diseases with high case fatality rates—such as AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and H5N1 avian influenza—have catapulted emerging infectious diseases to the top of the medical and political agendas, simultaneously highlighting the importance of wildlife as reservoirs or vectors for disease.

A topical example is avian influenza, which can cause human pandemics after genetic mutation or reassortment between influenza viruses of wild and domestic birds, other animals, and humans. The prospect of a global pandemic of H5N1 is very real, at least for wild . . . [Full text of this article]

Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London NW1 4RY (a.cunningham@ioz.ac.uk)

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