Currently new diseases are emerging at the rate of one every four months and three out of four of these diseases jump species from other animals. Many of these diseases are associated with agriculture. Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) led two systematic reviews of disease emergence and burden to help in prioritization. The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents the key findings of the reviews.
This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives. See all the posters.
The Rift Valley fever virus is a mosquito-borne pathogen that causes explosive outbreaks of severe human and livestock disease in Africa and Arabian Peninsula. The rapid evolution of outbreaks of Rift Valley fever generates exceptional challenges in its mitigation and control.
A decision-support tool for prevention and control of Rift Valley fever in the Greater Horn of Africa identifies a series of events that indicates increasing risk of an outbreak and matches interventions to each event.
This poster, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents information from a study that assessed the effectiveness of targeted vaccination in mitigating the impacts of outbreaks of Rift Valley fever.
This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives. See all the posters.
Over 60% of the newly identified infectious diseases that have affected people over the past few decades have been caused by pathogens originating from animals or animal products.
In agricultural areas that use more water, people face increased risk of infectious diseases, especially through zoonotic diseases (diseases transmissible from animals to people) as well as water-borne and vector-borne diseases.
The CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) carries out research to maximise the nutritional and health benefits of agricultural development. The programme has four research themes: value chains, biofortification, control of agriculture-associated diseases, and integrated programs and policies.
The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents an overview of a research carried out by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which leads the research theme on the prevention and control of agriculture-associated diseases within A4NH.
This research theme generates evidence on the prevalence, dynamics and burdens of agriculture-associated diseases by developing and testing the tools and approaches needed to better manage such diseases.
This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives. See all the posters.
Pastoralism is a farming system practised in arid and semi arid lands by societies that derive most of their food and income from livestock production. About 70% of the land mass in the Horn of Africa is dry land. In Kenya 80% of the land mass is classified as arid and semi-arid while approximately half of Tanzania consists of dry land. These dry lands can only be effectively used for livestock rearing, supporting wildlife resource harvesting and tourism.
The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents findings of a situation analysis of animal health and its implication on food safety in Kenya and Tanzania. The study reports on livestock diseases with high prevalence and their likely effects on food safety and food security in pastoral communities in the two countries. The extent of species rearing diversification, pastoralist trade orientation and practices that may expose the community and their trading partners to animal and zoonotic infections are also explained.
This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives. See all the posters.
Aflatoxins are cancer-causing mycotoxins produced by the mould Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillus can grow in a wide range of foods and feed and thrives under favourable conditions of high temperature and moisture content.
Aflatoxin contamination can occur before crops are harvested when temperatures are high, during harvest if wet conditions occur and after harvest if there is insect damage to the stored crop or if moisture levels are high during storage and transportation.
Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but can also end up in milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans.
The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents an overview of a research project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) aimed at measuring and mitigating the risk of aflatoxins in the feed-dairy chain in Kenya.
This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives. See all the posters.
Tarni Cooper with children from a livestock-keeping household in Morogoro, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).
We are pleased to congratulate Tarni Cooper, a veterinary scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), on being named as one of five recipients of the 2014 Distinguished Young Alumni awards of the University of Queensland (UQ). The award will be presented at a ceremony scheduled for 2 October 2014.
The award recognises outstanding alumni aged 35 years or younger whose early accomplishments inspire and provide leadership to students and alumni. She was a UQ valedictorian in 2010 when she was awarded her Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree with honours and also won the Dr John Gibb Biosecurity Memorial Prize that year.
In 2013, Cooper worked with ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development and was part of a research team that worked in rural Tanzania on a project to assess the presence of a range of potential pathogens in smallholder dairy cattle. She studied the use of various communication approaches to obtain informed consent during research.
An enumerator uses a poster to obtain informed consent for research in Morogoro, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).
Livestock keepers in Morogoro, Tanzania examine a poster used to obtain informed consent for research (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).
Previously, she spent time in Vietnam during a five-year project, working with smallholder pig farmers and using participatory video as an innovative communication approach to help the farmers learn from each other and improve their pig production methods. Earlier this year she returned to Vietnam and used participatory photography to study the long-term impact of the film.
Cooper is currently collaborating with ILRI on a Vietnam-based project on livestock competitiveness and food safety, as well as serving on the Institutional Research Ethics Committee. Her next career goal is to undertake a PhD in communication for social change.
Part of a large camel herd in northern Kenya; on the outskirts of Marsabit and Moyale, the average distances to watering points run into dozens of kilometres (photo credit: Ann Weru/IRIN).
Written by Dan Klotz
Two new papers on MERS coronavirus and camels in Eastern Africa have been published in the science journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Summary points
Studies find that camels in Egypt, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan have antibodies to the coronavirus that causes MERS.
The first study indicates that young camels are at greater risk of harbouring the virus than older camels.
We do not know if the infections in East African camels have led to, or could lead to, disease in people; this possibility should be investigated.
We do not know if or how much the East African camel virus is related to the one infecting camels and people in the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt; this possibility…
Emerging and neglected zoonoses have often been managed sectorally, but recent decades have shown, in case after case, the benefits of One Health management.
The growing body of evidence suggests the time has come to make the bigger case for massive investment in One Health to transform the management of neglected and emerging zoonoses, annually saving the lives of millions of people as well as hundreds of millions of animals whose production supports and nourishes billions of impoverished people.
Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) sets out a ‘Big 5’ framework for One Health:
Join up health resources: Share health resources across human and veterinary sectors
Aflatoxins are highly toxic fungal by-products produced by certain strains of Aspergillus flavus in grains and other crops. Consumption of very high levels of aflatoxins can cause acute illness and death. Chronic exposure to aflatoxins is linked to liver cancer, especially where hepatitis is prevalent, and this is estimated to cause as many as 26,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa.
Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but the toxins can end up in products like milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans. Of these animal-source food products, milk has the greatest risk because relatively large amounts of aflatoxin are carried over and milk is consumed especially by infants.
As part of knowledge exchange on the latest research developments in the area of aflatoxins and food safety, Delia Grace and Johanna Lindahl, food safety researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), presented on aflatoxins, animal health and the safety of animal-source foods at a virtual briefing organized by the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, a network of 37 bilateral donors, multilateral agencies and international financing institutions working to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable rural development.
Their presentation began with an overview of aflatoxins and how livestock and fish get exposed to aflatoxins. This was followed by a discussion on the impact of aflatoxins on animal health and production, how aflatoxins in crops move through the food chain to end up in animal-source foods and ways to manage the risk of aflatoxins in animals and animal-source foods.
The need for evidence-based approaches in developing standards for animal feeds was highlighted, as well as the need for risk-based regulation and legislation to provide guidelines on safety issues such as appropriate management of aflatoxin-contaminated feed.
The presentation concluded with a summary of the key messages and policy recommendations, followed by a question-and-answer session.
Watch the recording of the briefing (approx. 34 minutes)
More information on research on aflatoxins and food safety is available in a set of 19 research briefs published in November 2013 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The briefs were co-edited by Laurian Unnevehr of IFPRI and Delia Grace of ILRI.
Read more about ILRI’s research projects on aflatoxins
Hmong butchers selling pig meat from the indigenous Hmong black pig, recognizable from its thick layer of fat below the skin, Bac Ha, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam (photo credit: ILRI/Jo Cadilhon).
The July 2014 issue of Partners Magazine, the flagship publication of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), features an article on an ACIAR-funded project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) that uses a risk assessment approach towards improving the safety of pig and pork value chains in Vietnam.
Hung Nguyen-Viet, an ILRI scientist and deputy director of the Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research (CENPHER) at the Hanoi School of Public Health, is playing a lead role in the project which is working to strengthen local capacity on risk assessment for effective management of food safety along the entire value chain.
In addition to organizations recognized for specific projects and outputs, we thank all donors which globally supported the work of ILRI and its partners through their contributions to the CGIAR system
Emerging and neglected zoonoses have often been managed sectorally, but recent decades have shown, in case after case, the benefits of One Health management.
AgHealth 