Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly demonstrated the need for better disease intelligence that is capable of anticipating and identifying epidemic risks and outbreaks. This includes emerging and re-emerging MBD risks. In the absence of effective vaccine solutions for most MBDs, attention has turned to vector management as an excellent, but underutilized opportunity for combating these diseases.
The basis of such management should come from a deep understanding of the factors that drive disease circulation, emergence and spreading. This requires a view of the complex interplay between humans, disease-carrying mosquitoes, disease reservoirs (e.g., birds), and the environment, including all the factors that drive spatial behavior and interactions. Among other things, we have insufficient empirical data about water-climate relationships, and the socio-ecological factors driving heterogeneous interactions and modulating disease pathways. This leaves us unable to make good predictions about the risks andspreading patterns of MBDs and it weakens our ability to design effective prevention, control, and treatment strategies.
The E4Warning consortium brings together interdisciplinary, innovative, and open science to contribute to the One Health paradigm shift that is required to tackle the spread of zoonotic pathogens and the emergence of zoonotic disease transmission. It will improve understanding of the interplay between humans, mosquitoes, reservoir species and the environment, and harness this to nowcast and forecast MBD risk in a constantly changing and globally connected environment.
