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Many problems in public health that hit the news headlines concern infectious disease, and of these most are either zoonoses or involve human-animal interactions of some kind. World-wide, around 75% of emerging infectious diseases of human beings are zoonoses, yet research in the area is often piece-meal, incomplete or sometimes even contradictory. At least in part, this is because zoonotic infections have traditionally spanned medical and veterinary responsibilities - and have often fallen in the divide between them.
A better understanding of zoonoses requires an integrated, multidisciplinary approach, that brings together infectious disease specialists with epidemiologists, veterinary scientists, ecologists, mathematicians and statisticians, with molecular- and micro- biologists, all working together to produce a gene-to-population understanding of the diseases.
