At the U21 (Universitas21) Health Science Meeting, hosted by UCD, the global university network of Health Sciences heard how the One Health approach to viral detection, discovery and characterisation has helped identify all viral diversity in every species and could help rank the risk of these viruses for interspecies transmission.

Meeting attendees also heard that 60% of all infectious diseases and 75% of all emerging infectious diseases have a link to zoonoses (disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans), so understanding the disease threats and developing mitigation strategies to prevent infection and spread of viruses are key to preventing future devastating pandemics.

One Health, the central theme of the U21 HSG meeting, is an approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation, and research whereby multiple sectors from the human, animal and environment health worlds communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. The vision of UCD One Health is to maximize the health and well-being of humans, animals and the environment through academic excellence, collaborative research, education, and outreach.

Speaking on Pandemic Preparedness at the meeting, Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology and Executive Director of One Health Institute, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, US, Professor Jonna Mazet said: ‘We can reasonably estimate that there are more than 500,000 zoonotic viruses, about which we know nothing or very little, that have the potential to spill over from evolutionary host species to vulnerable ones and cause disease. Threats posed by pandemics and epidemics are now clear to every household around the world where a single lethal microbe can emerge suddenly and spread rapidly to every community without regard to national borders or to social and economic standing.

“The SARS, Ebola, and Zika outbreaks did little to prepare us for the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, which serves as a clear call that we are vulnerable to emerging viral threats. The Global Virome Project is a strategic response to the growing need to better predict, prevent, and respond to future viral pandemic threats and to protect us all from their worst consequences. This brings health professionals and scientists from many disciplines together to share protocols and data under one umbrella and therefore countries will gain the benefits of shared global and regional virus identification and disease mitigation strategies, while maintaining autonomy to respond to local needs’ continued Professor Mazet.

Also speaking at the U21 HSG meeting, Professor of Infection Biology at UCD School of Veterinary Medicine and UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, and the U21 HSG Meeting Academic Director, Professor Stephen Gordon said: "The One Health approach allows us focus on the interaction of human, animal and environmental health coupled with the integration of ideas in plant health, climate, water and air quality, and urbanisation.

"Sometimes that breadth can be difficult to manage within One Health so in this meeting we have tried to pull out some key themes that speak to the diversity of One Health and that are particularly relevant to the current pandemic, which of course resulted from the close interaction of humans and animals. The mobilisation of research that we have witnessed since the onslaught of this pandemic is also unprecedented in terms of dealing with an infectious diseases, and this will provide us with the knowledge, therapies and ultimately the vaccine which will control the pandemic."

The U21 HSG is a global university network of Health Sciences staff and students that includes members from 19 universities worldwide. The vision of One Health/U21 is to maximize the health and well-being of humans, animals and the environment through academic excellence, collaborative research, education, and outreach. In essence One Health is an approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation, and research whereby multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better global public health outcomes. UCD College of Health and Agriculture Science was selected to host the twentieth U21 HSG Group Annual Meeting in August 2020.

The central theme of the 2020 U21 HSG meeting is One Health: A Collaborative Approach To Health. See full meeting programme here.