One Health for Surveillance

The majority of new emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonoses. The factors that drive the emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases are complex and include climate-related, ecological, political, economic and social factors. Animal health, human health and the environment are interconnected, and different ecosystems across Europe are changing in different ways. There is a need for more rapid and effective responses to zoonotic diseases. This is achievable with a conceptual shift from siloed health approaches towards One Health practices across disciplines, sectors, and agencies. The surveillance on the animal health side and in the environment needs to be scaled up to set up a One Health surveillance for emerging and re-emerging pathogens. OH4Surveillance is a consortium of 11 beneficiaries and 11 affiliated entities from 11 countries, respectively, which aims to set up and scale up One Health surveillance to priority pathogens in an efficient, coordinated and collaborative manner. Surveillance activities in each country aims to protect public health through the early detection of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic pathogens in animals and environment. The capacity building activities to achieve this aim is supported by the consortium through knowledge exchange and networking activities. SVA works with FOHM in this project, from surveillance design to interpretation and communication of zoonotic pathogens in Sweden.