Supporting One Health scientific research to design and test better strategies to prevent pandemics.
The promotion of One Health science would provide an overarching mechanism to enable closing of knowledge gaps. This would likely need to begin with transdisciplinary academic training in faculties of medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, and social, ecological and environmental sciences, both in develop and developing countries. In many countries, an overwhelming proportion of the infectious disease research budget is allocated to vaccine and therapeutic development, rather than preventative approaches that involve collaboration among animal, human and environmental sectors. A One Health framework could be considered to provide research and collaboration among programs on ecological interactions of wildlife, livestock and people across gradients of land use; social science of behavioural risk for pandemics; pathological analyses of wildlife disease outbreaks to identify potential zoonotic pathogens in wildlife. This work is particularly important in biodiverse countries which are often relatively resource-poor. Donors from developed countries could support research in these key EID hotspots.