Challenges ahead: Pathogens can cross species Credit: Associated Press

With the number of emerging infectious diseases on the rise worldwide, researchers and health experts are increasingly recognizing the benefits of integrating human and veterinary medical sciences at subnational, national and international levels. Case in point: on 3 February, the Royal Society (the UK's academy of science) published a policy statement recommending the creation of a National Institute of Infectious Diseases that would act as an umbrella for “technical know-how, research expertise and funding on infectious diseases,” linking scientists who research human infectious diseases with those who study such diseases in animals.

This statement is in line with the 'one medicine'—or 'one health'—movement that aims to reunite medical and veterinary sciences, two fields that drifted apart over the past century. In 2006, the World Health Organization and partners launched a global system to predict and respond to animal diseases that are transmissible to humans, as part of WHO's veterinary public health program, and the American Medical Association and American Veterinary Medical Association adopted one-health resolutions in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

Although previous initiatives have increased collaboration between human and veterinary medical researchers and practitioners, the Royal Society's statement is the first to suggest modifying an entire country's organizational structure of infectious disease research, prevention and response. “It's really the bringing together of two cultures,” says Keith Gull of the University of Oxford, who served as chairman of the Royal Society committee behind the new statement. In addition to academic collaborations, the proposed shift would lead to changes in regulatory and funding policies.

The call to action is seen as timely, given that pathogens originating from an animal or animal-derived product caused approximately 75% of new diseases affecting humans over the past ten years. Experts have found veterinary medicine expertise crucial to stopping outbreaks, such as that involving the SARS virus. Threats of outbreaks of diseases such as avian flu further highlight the need for integration, according to researchers. “To identify and contain a serious avian flu pandemic requires simultaneous and coordinated work on domestic poultry, wild birds, pigs and humans,” says Sir Richard Feachem, a global health expert at the University of California–San Francisco.

Although he explains the benefits of a more integrated approach, Gull concedes it is unlikely the proposed National Institute of Infectious Diseases will be created any time soon. He says the changes will be difficult to make “because of the cultural history, which is a very powerful thing to try to overcome.”

There are many obstacles—political will and money being two of them, explains James Hughes, professor of medicine and public health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and former director of the National Center for Infectious Disease at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hughes notes, however, that infectious disease outbreaks will continue to propel cross-disciplinary collaborations. “The microbes are there to remind us to work more closely together on the research side and the public health side,” he says.