News, Events and Blog Postings
‘One Health for the Real World’ (or, ‘real livestock for real global wellbeing’)
The four members of the organizing committee of the One Health for the Real World Symposium and key players in the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium: (left to right), James Wood, University of Cambridge; Andrew Cunningham, Zoological Society of London;...
Kenya Field Epidemiology and Laboratory training (FELTP)
The Kenya program is the first FELTP to be started in Africa in 2004, and its objective is to strengthen in-country public health systems and infrastructure. It is anchored within the Department of Promotive and Preventive Health in the Ministry of Health (MOH) and trains field epidemiologist for the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MALF).
URBAN ZOO PROJECT: The interesting mix of the 99 household study an interesting and exciting diversity!
Studying zoonoses of livestock and wildlife in an urban setting presents us with a very interesting study site. We collect samples from the slums (the very low income area), middle income areas and the very high income areas of Nairobi, with varied levels of environmental contamination, ranging from areas that are littered with garbage and permeated with open sewerage systems, (often complemented with the infamous ‘flying toilets’) to the very clean areas with high levels of infrastructure and garbage collection systems. We are eagerly anticipating what these radically different, yet often closely neighbouring environments will yield in terms of microbial diversity!
Urban Zoo Annual Meeting
The multidisciplinary Epidemiology, ecology and socio-economics of disease emergence in Nairobi Project (Urban Zoo project) held its third annual meeting in London on January 19th and 20th, 2016. The meeting was attended by representatives from ILRI, APHRC, KEMRI, University of Nairobi, RVC, University of Liverpool, SOAS and the University of Edinburgh, UCL, IIED. PIs, PhD students, post docs and other researchers involved in the project, as well as members of the External Panel, our group of ‘friendly critics’ who keep the project on track, gathered to discuss this year’s progress.
Letter from the PI: Emergence of pathogens in the human and animal population
The Urban Zoo project is certainly an exciting and challenging ‘beast.’ Funded by the UK Research Council Environmental and Social Ecology of Human Infectious Diseases (ESEI) initiative, we’ve certainly been deeply engaged in building an evidence base that is allowing us to understand the human, natural, wildlife and social environment of the complex and fascinating city of Nairobi. Our teams, each led by specific expertise in different leading academic institutions in Kenya and the UK, have lifted the lid on the complex worlds of livestock production, food supply, human nutrition, diarrhoeal disease, wildlife-human-livestock interfaces, microbial genetics, low income settlement patterns and urban planning. The efforts and energy of the field teams and lab teams in delivering the samples and the data on this project are quite astounding.
It is time to rethink the way we handle pets and wildlife
During the Kenya Medical Research Institute’s fifth scientific conference, which also took place in February, scientists raised the alarm over the transmission of diseases from animal to humans.
The World Health Organisation says that 60 per cent of the pathogens that cause infectious diseases in human beings come from animals.
According to the US’s Centre for Disease Control and prevention, zoonoses include a wide range of diseases, ranging from mass killers such as anthrax, Ebola, swine flu, West Nile Virus, bird flu, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever and the Hendra Virus to subtle and slow killers like rabies, Rift Valley Fever and Brucellosis
Informal food vendors training
The food vendors training was held at Mlango Kubwa on 25th February, 2016 involving 30 plus food vendors carefully selected from thirteen villages in Mathare Valley in Kenya. The food vendors ranged from the ones who sell: meat products, vegetables, fruits, eggs, fish and the ones selling ready made food products.
The aim of the training was to enlighten and empower the participants with practical skills and knowledge on proper food, premise and attire hygiene, sanitation and safety issues.
Muungano wa Wanavijiji food security programme coordinators mobilized the participants while ILRI and APHRC facilitated the training. The activity was in response to vendors’ own requests for capacity-building and offered a crucial opportunity to support livelihoods and bolster community health across eight villages in Mathare.
Why Nairobi must spread the right food message in an unhealthy environment
Scientific evidence shows that consuming at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day can prolong your life and reduce your risk of developing non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer.
Yet not enough people across the world are consuming adequate amounts of fruit and vegetables. In low and middle income countries, over 75% of adults consume less than the minimum recommendation. In Tanzania more than 95% of people consume less than the minimum requirement.
In the slums of Nairobi, our research shows that less than half of the adult population are meeting their daily fruit or vegetable requirements. Instead, as global fast food outlets flood the Kenyan market, they prefer junk food which they see as a status symbol.
This could be why there are high levels of hypertension and diabetes in these slums where one in every five people has one of the two conditions. In addition, we found that less than a quarter of those who had diabetes were aware of their condition. And fewer than 5% of all people with diabetes had their blood sugar under control.
WHO statement on the first meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR 2005) Emergency Committee on Zika virus and observed increase in neurological disorders and neonatal malformations
The first meeting of the Emergency Committee (EC) convened by the Director-General under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR 2005) regarding clusters of microcephaly cases and other neurologic disorders in some areas affected by Zika virus was held by teleconference on 1 February 2016, from 13:10 to 16:55 Central European Time.
The WHO Secretariat briefed the Committee on the clusters of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) that have been temporally associated with Zika virus transmission in some settings. The Committee was provided with additional data on the current understanding of the history of Zika virus, its spread, clinical presentation and epidemiology.
The following States Parties provided information on a potential association between microcephaly and/or neurological disorders and Zika virus disease: Brazil, France, United States of America, and El Salvador.
The Committee advised that the recent cluster of microcephaly cases and other neurologic disorders reported in Brazil, following a similar cluster in French Polynesia in 2014, constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Our Work in Pictures
Free range pig
![October 2012: Visitor [Nicola Wardrop]](https://i0.wp.com/www.zoonotic-diseases.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Nicola-Wardrop.jpg?fit=100%2C100)
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