One of the biggest threats today is the uncertainty surrounding the emergence of a novel pathogen or the re-emergence of a known infectious disease that might result in disease outbreaks with great losses of human life and immense global economic consequences. Over the past six decades, most of the emerging infectious disease events in humans have been caused by zoonotic pathogens—those infectious agents that are transmitted from animals to humans. Noteworthy changes in the patterns of human and animal contact in recent years make conditions ripe for global outbreaks of zoonotic diseases. Some of these diseases, including AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Avian Influenza, have already caused global health and economic crises. With one billion people crossing international borders every year, animals and animal products including meat traveling great distances to reach their final destinations, and disproportionate population growth in countries with the highest poverty rates, new outbreaks could emerge with devastating health, economic, environmental, agricultural, and sociopolitical results.

In June 2008, the Institute of Medicine’s and National Research Council’s Committee on Achieving Sustainable Global Capacity for Surveillance and Response to Emerging Diseases of Zoonotic Origin convened a workshop. This workshop addressed the reasons for the transmission of zoonotic disease and explored the current global capacity for zoonotic disease surveillance. In particular, workshop participants discussed methods of disease surveillance as a way of detecting outbreaks of zoonotic disease in humans, outbreaks of diseases in animals, and how these data can inform the responses to these outbreaks or perhaps prevent outbreaks in the future. The committee will follow up these discussions with a consensus study with its recommendations for sustainable global capacity for zoonotic disease surveillance and response, to be released June 2009.