Dr Mark Schipp on One Health initiatives

One Health wildlife health surveillance initiative 

As the new year quickly gathers pace, I wanted to highlight some of the priority projects which my team and I are involved with in 2022. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the risk of diseases which can emerge from the human-animal-environmental interface. It has been estimated that there are 1.7 million undiscovered viruses in mammal and bird hosts. Many exist in wildlife and feral animal species and are evolving into different variants which pose an unknown level of risk to humans, animals and our ecosystems. We also know that globally 70% of all emerging diseases are zoonotic, and of these roughly 71% emerge from wildlife. 

The potential economic, social and environmental costs to Australia of wildlife disease are significant. In recognition of the need to enhance Australia’s wildlife health surveillance and intelligence gathering system – to better protect wildlife and support One Health outcomes to help prevent future pandemics – the Australian Government has recently funded a new initiative to bolster Australia’s wildlife health and emerging animal disease mitigation capabilities. 

This initiative has been designed to strengthen wildlife health outcomes while also maximising the capabilities of our biosecurity system to mitigate risks to domestic animal and human health. This includes identifying any diseases that could prove harmful to domestic animals, wild animals, humans and or the environment, including the identification of animal disease-vectors that could pose a disease-transmission risk to humans. 

As veterinarians, we are all aware that nearly all major exotic livestock diseases of potential concern to Australia, including African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease, will have wildlife or feral animals as part of their epidemiology. In tandem with this, protecting Australia’s wildlife and ecosystems is also critical to pandemic prevention, with increasing potential for disease emergence as climate change and land use changes put pressure on our environment. 

Wildlife Health Australia leads this important work 

I am pleased that veterinarians will be at the forefront of this important work, with Dr Rupert Woods and his team at Wildlife Health Australia (WHA) leading the implementation of this One Health wildlife health surveillance initiative. Building on WHA’s existing wildlife disease surveillance network across Australia, the new funding will enable WHA’s activities to grow to expand Australia’s wildlife disease investigation and analysis capacity. 

This will involve enhancing the investigation of the underlying causes of wildlife health events, and establishment of ‘One Health Investigation Fund’ administered by WHA, to support the field, laboratory, and epidemiological components of these investigations. The initiative will also seek to establish WHA as an official World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Collaborating Centre on Wildlife Health for Australia and the Indo-Pacific. I think this work is vitally important as Australia demonstrates its leadership of global efforts to counter the threat of future pandemics. 

Another aspect of this One Health work in the context of enhancing biosecurity and wildlife surveillance, will be to expand wildlife health-related partnerships with key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders stakeholders and organisations that have close ties to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, as well as strengthening collaboration with feral animal disease experts. I encourage you to follow and support the work of WHA as this initiative is implemented. 

Preventing rabies in our region 

Another important initiative my office is involved with, is supporting the control of rabies in south-east Asia. Rabies is a terrible zoonotic disease that kills almost 60,000 people around the world every year, mostly in Asia and Africa. We are fortunate that Australia is free from rabies, but the disease is active in our region, and rabies poses a significant risk to Australia due to our expansive northern coastline. We know that vaccinating dogs against rabies protects not only the dogs from this disease, but it also protects the communities in which they live and interact. 

The Australian Government through the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment is contributing funding to support mass dog vaccination programs in Indonesia, Cambodia and other southeast Asian countries, to protect locals and their dogs from rabies and in doing so, reducing the threat of the disease in our region. The program involves collaboration with local authorities and the OIE’s 'Zero by 30' global campaign which is aiming for zero human deaths due to rabies carried by dogs by 2030. 

In addition to the dog vaccination program, Australia is supporting community engagement programs in the region about the importance of rabies vaccination, assisting local authorities to update their rabies prevention strategies and helping rabies-free countries and provinces to maintain their disease free status. By supporting the eradication of rabies in neighbouring countries, we are able to gather intelligence about the incidence of disease, which supports our ability to keep rabies out of Australia. 

Over the coming months I look forward to sharing further updates with you about the other exciting initiatives that the Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer is involved with. I would also like to encourage you to follow my social media channels on LinkedIn @Mark Schipp and on Twitter @MarkSchipp for updates of relevance to animal health in Australia and to keep abreast of our diverse activities.