BMJ  2005;331:1260 (26 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7527.1260

Commentary

Zoonotic potential of emerging animal diseases

Samson S Y Wong, assistant professor1, K Y Yuen, professor of infectious diseases1

1 Research Centre of Infection and Immunology, Department of Microbiology, the University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, China

Correspondence to: K Y Yuen hkumicro@hkucc.hku.hk

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

Palmer and colleagues have proposed an algorithm for early qualitative risk assessment of the emerging zoonotic potential of animal diseases,1 a vital problem since more than half of all new or emerging infectious diseases agents in humans are zoonotic in origin.2 Human infections due to agents such as the coronavirus responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), avian influenza A viruses, and HIV pose enormous problems because they are (a) difficult to manage clinically, (b) prohibitively expensive to treat in resource-poor areas, (c) capable of rapid global spread, (d) virtually impossible to eliminate once stable transmission among humans has been established, or (e) capable of inducing fear and substantial economic losses. Therefore, prior knowledge and public health preparedness are essential for their prevention and control. The bottleneck for this control effort lies in discovering and characterising these agents. Once achieved, . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Early qualitative risk assessment of the emerging zoonotic potential of animal diseases
Stephen Palmer, David Brown, and Dilys Morgan
BMJ 2005 331: 1256-1260. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ