Lessons Learned from COVID-19: a PREZODE workshop at the World Health Summit

Chaired by Dr. Benjamin Roche Research Director RD and PREZODE scientific Referent, the workshop gathered Andrea Winkler, Professor, Centre for Global Health at UiO & Co-chair of the Lancet One Health, Ana Isabel Bento, Science Director at the Pandemic Prevention Institute, Benoit Miribel, Secretary General of Fondation Une Santé Durable pour Tous, Wanda Markotter, Research Chair in Animal Infectious Diseases (Zoonoses), University of Pretoria, and OHHLEP Co-chair. The discussions addressed One Health as a significant and necessary approach to implement prevention strategies against emerging zoonoses, diseases caused by pathogens that spread between wild animals, farm animals and humans. These emergences and re-emergences are deeply linked to the pressures exerted on the environment, in particular on natural habitats and biodiversity. 30% of them are believed to be due to changes in land use, including deforestation.

For Andrea Winkler: “Forecasting of drivers and social sciences should be integrated into the concept of surveillance". Anticipating what could potentially happen before coming out of the wildlife is innovative. Dr. Benjamin Roche underlined: "It is important to use the momentum that we have today to create the systems we will need for the future". Pr. Wanda Markotter raised the “need to act at the interface: the solutions need to be codeveloped with the communities to be accepted”.

Watch the replay of the session

WS 20 - Lessons Learned from COVID-19: Preventing Zoonotic Diseases Emergence