Indicators for human exposures to zoonotic pathogens | WHO reports: The world continues to face ongoing threats from the emergence and re-emergence of infectious
zoonotic pathogens with epidemic and pandemic potential. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2, resulting
in the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, has inflicted devastating health and socio-economic
consequences at an unprecedented scale. This pandemic has demonstrated how an emerging novel
pathogen can impact every aspect of our daily lives and impose a dramatic burden on our societies.
The scientific and public health communities recognize it will be crucial to improve our preparedness
and response to similar future pandemic threats. In particular, prevention will require the
development of sustainable strategies against emerging zoonoses, aiming to reduce spillovers and
curb pandemic threats at the source.
Although investing substantially in prevention strategies against zoonotic emergence would cost
only 1% of the estimated cost for the COVID-19 pandemic (Dobson 2020), primary prevention
approaches (OHHLEP, 2023) still do not make it onto the agendas of international academic, public
health and operational organizations. One of the reasons for this is the challenge of quantifying
disease emergence risk, which is a complex, multidimensional, and multifactorial issue. Furthermore,
the ability to evaluate the impact of prevention strategies is hampered by the absence of documented
and widely accepted indicators. Therefore, operationalizing the One Health approach to strengthen
prevention strategies requires an initial set of basic indicators that can reliably measure how the risk
of spillover is being reduced by the interventions applied.
In this context, PREZODE together with WHO convened a working group of 16 members with varied
expertise and backgrounds to propose standardized indicators that can qualify the likelihood of
zoonotic exposure of human populations. The proposed indicators are intended to be actionable, i.e.,
to reflect the impact of the implementation of a prevention strategy along the process of zoonotic
pathogen emergence and over time.
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