Emerging Pandemic Threats Program Flashcards
USAID provides technical and financial assistance programs in
- global health
- agriculture and food security
- education, gender equality and humanitarian assistance
- environment, economic growth, democracy, special assistance programs
Role of USAID
Promote social and economic progress in developing countries
USAID offices
Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, Middle East, Africa
2 USAID programs of relevance to vet medicine
- bureau for global health: improve quality, availability and delivery of basic/essential health services
- bureau for food security: interventions in sustainable livestock agriculture to enhance incomes and achieve global food security
Human activities and impacts on global health and food security
Human activities –> demands on food production systems –> adverse health outcomes
- increasing human population, rapid urbanization and rising incomes all leads to increase in demand for animal source foods
- changing trends in livestock production, pressures on natural habitats and ecosystems, and climate associated drivers of EIDs all have adverse impacts on human health
USAID Bureau for global health - 3 priorities
- preventing child and maternal deaths
- controlling HIV/AIDS epidemic
- combating infectious diseases: global zoonotic pandemics, multi-drug TB, neglected tropical diseases
Bureau for food security
- objective: develop strategies for sustainable and resilient global food systems
- outcome: increase agricultural production to efficiently and equitably combat global hunger, poverty and malnutrition
Global EID pandemics
- ebola
- MERS
- marburg
- zika
- swine influenza
- avian influenza
- SARS
- west nile
- nipah and hendra virus
SARS
Febrile atypical respiratory illness
- progresses rapidly to respiratory failure
- health workers at risk, antibiotic resistant
- spread from Asia to Europe/America
- guidelines on airline screening to decrease risk of global spread of SARS
SARS etiology
Coronavirus
- determined etiology from SARS Hong Kong patient: infected cynomologus macaques –> reproduced signs similar to SARS in humans –> re-isolated infectious agent and infected new macaques
Lessons from SARS pandemic
- EIDs have devastating impacts –> loss of life, uncertainty and economic consequences
- importance of information and communication during EID events
- need for international efforts to bring EID under control
Global response to avian influenza
International platform to prioritize AI, mobilize resources, increase transparency in disease reporting, improve surveillance and build local capacity to identify, contain and respond to future epidemics
USAID established EPT
Approach: strengthen national capacity in Africa, Asia and Latin America through One Health
- predict, prevent, identify, respond!!
Objective of EPT
- strengthen country-level capacity for routine infectious disease detection and outbreak response
- improve surveillance and response, in addition to risk mitigation strategies, minimization of practices and behaviors that trigger spill over and spread
Goal of EPT
To safeguard human and animal health and livelihoods in 20 developing countries where pandemic zoonoses are most likely to emerge
Predict
- detection and discovery of zoonotic pathogens at the wildlife human interface
- strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity for monitoring public health threats
Prevent
- characterization of specific practices and behaviors that increase the risk of exposure to zoonoses (bushmeat hunting and butchering, raising wildlife for trade and consumption)
- risk mitigation tool for extractive industry workers to decrease exposure to EIDs (minimization of wildlife disturbance, monitor employee health, community health programs, animal source protein access)
Identify
- improving lab assessment tools to allow for better targeting of technical support and training
- developing training modules on diagnosing highly infectious diseases
- improving lab management practices related to biosecurity and biocontainment
- twinning labs in developed countries with those in developing countries
- expanding activities to monitor antibiotic resistance
Respond
- networking 34 schools of public health, vet med and environment in SE Asia and Africa
- development of an outbreak response algorithm for health events where the cause has not been identified
- supporting outbreak response when requested
Global trends
Increasing human population, rapid urbanization, rising incomes = new stresses on livestock production systems
New approaches to increase livestock production have led to
- food safety hazards (infectious and chemical)
- antimicrobial resistance
- foodborne zoonoses
Core competencies
- experience working/living abroad
- cultural awareness
- foreign language skills
- effective communication
- experience with broad, systemic issues
- economic, management and policy background
- development background
