When Animals Make People Sick
July 11, 2012
Health workers killed 17,000 chickens at a poultry market in Hong Kong in December after officials said a dead chicken tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Researchers estimate that more than two billion people a year get diseases spread by animals. More than two million of them die.
Delia Grace is a veterinary epidemiologist -- an expert in the spread of diseases involving animals. She is also a food safety expert. She works at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. She explains that diseases transmitted between animals and people are called zoonoses.
DELIA GRACE: "A majority of human diseases are actually zoonotic. More than sixty percent of human diseases are transmitted from other vertebrate animals. Some of these diseases are pretty common. Some of the food-borne diseases and also diseases such as tuberculosis, leptospirosis are not uncommon. Others are quite rare."
Delia Grace says there are many different infection pathways for a person. Probably the most common one is for people to get sick from food. Other transmission pathways include direct contact with animals. And some diseases can be transmitted through water or through the air.
DELIA GRACE: "Diseases like avian influenza or mad cow disease have actually killed very few people. But they are of interest because some of them have the potential to kill a lot of people -- diseases like the Spanish flu after the First World War or HIV/AIDS, both of which were originally zoonoses."
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