Watch Now: Stopping the Next Pandemic: The Role of Animals in Disease Transmission

In 2022, over 55 million birds across the United States died from bird flu, making it the worst ever outbreak in the country. As climate change and human encroachment on animal habitats bring humans and animals into ever closer contact, the risk of animal diseases infecting humans – zoonotic diseases – grows.

We have already experienced these devastating effects with the 2009 swine flu pandemic, the 2014-15 zika virus epidemic that affected North and South America, and the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, as well as rabies, which kills approximately 59,000 people worldwide every year. Studies have shown that an estimated 60 percent of known infectious diseases and up to 75 percent of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin.

Is the current epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza a threat to human health? What factors are driving animal-to-human transmission of these diseases? What global policies and practices do we need to adopt to curb these cross-species infections? Join Perry World House for a thought-provoking discussion on the potential impact of diseases such as avian influenza, swine flu, Ebola, and SARS-CoV-2, which all emerged from animal sources, and how to prevent them.

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