Human alterations of landscapes and resultant impacts on human and animal distributions are key environmental changes occurring worldwide. Evidence is growing that such anthropogenic environmental changes are driving increased emergence of zoonotic pathogens. However, the current understanding of these linkages is limited, primarily correlative, and inconsistent across spatial and temporal scales, pathogens, transmission routes, and ecological contexts. This project will apply inter- and trans- disciplinary studies to characterize the ecological and social impacts of transitions from one land-use type to another, including effects on wild and domestic hosts, their pathogens, and human-nature relations. The project focuses on the under-studied, highly biodiverse, and rapidly changing landscapes of the Andes-Amazon-Orinoco in Colombiaand Bolivia, and the Indigenous and local communities reliant on them. We will define the links between potential pathogen emergence and environmental transformation to better detect, predict and prevent future pandemic emergence associated with land use change, and strengthen the evidence base for integrating health into environmental conservation and development policies and Indigenous territorial management plans.

Links to institutional outputs can be found on the institute website.

The PANDASIA project provides a framework that will increase our understanding of the biology of viruses with emerging infectious disease potential and their interaction with humans, animals, and the environment and translate this understanding into proactive preventative actions. Such research is crucial for providing evidence-based knowledge and tools for better integrative public health measures for local and national actors. We will develop models to identify and predict drivers of disease emergence, which will be evaluated with real-world data, refined, and used to develop health and pandemic literacy intervention strategies that reduce the risk of future viral emergence, thereby reducing the burden of zoonotic spillover to human health. Since pandemics arise at a local level, it is important to engage with local communities and health, environment, and agriculture authorities to improve their health and pandemic literacy to ensure adequate preparedness and vigilance for future spillover events and human, animal, and environmental health threats.

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The goal of the project is to demonstrate that intact koala retroviruses (KoRVs) are purged from the koala population and replaced by degraded versions potentially less harmful to the host species. What has been lacking is a natural system to directly and in a controlled fashion, examine birth, purging and fixation of KoRVs and degraded KoRVs and to test whether an empirical basis for the fixation of neutral KoRVs and purging of deleterious KoRVs exists. We are well placed to study such population genetic effects of endogenization using animals on the Island of St. Bees. Since this koala population is on an island and derived from few founders, we have the opportunity to directly observe purging effects due to deleterious KoRVs that exhibit effects as homozygotes or heterozygotes and to observe their birth and death.

One Health (OH) implementation relies on collaboration across sectors and actors; however, there is a lack of understanding on the required level of integration/collaboration. In the context of globalisation and destabilisation at the interfaces of the human-animal- environment implementation of OH, building health system resilience is mercurial for countries of the Global South like India. The RICOHA (Research to explore Intersectoral Collaborations for One Health Approach) study, conducted from 2017 to 2020 in Ahmedabad, India, attempted to shed light on One Health implementation and practice. It encapsulated the intersectoral network strength, actors and system factors of the current health system (human & animal), and the degree of collaboration and factors responsible for OH implementation in the local context. It also captured the zoonotic disease awareness level and practices in the community, especially among cattle handlers. Due to a lack of data on the disease burden, initiating the OH implementation process was challenging. Thus, the RICOHA project explored possible strategies to operationalise OH in the selected study settings. This study documented prioritisation of zoonotic diseases, potential OH actors, their power-influence relation and pattern of intersectoral collaboration in the multifaceted health system. Finally, different OH strategies and OH enabling factors were documented and validated.

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The surge in emerging and re-emerging diseases, especially zoonoses, over the first decades of the 21st Century has highlighted the need for health system strengthening in general and the implementation of One Health in particular. Findings from one of our previous studies, Research to explore Intersectoral Collaborations for One Health Approach (RICOHA) in India, highlighted a lack of collaboration among the health workforce due to low awareness and knowledge of One Health and lacked thereof community participation. Therefore, training the health workforce in the One Health approach is essential for overcoming implementation barriers. A series of stakeholder workshops will be conducted, the emerging threats and risks at the One Health nexus will be identified and prioritized in three western Indian states, i.e., Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. Training courses will equip the clinical and community health workforce with the necessary knowledge and tools to contribute to One Health implementation and consequent health system strengthening.

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