Effort aims to enhance teamwork to improve human, animal health

A task force of physicians and veterinarians is finding common ground for their professions.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Aug. 13, 2007.

Washington -- Animal and human health intersect in numerous ways, and a new collaborative effort by the American Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Assn. is setting out to explore them.

The line separating animal diseases from human ones is continually blurring. Think of the ongoing avian influenza watch and recent outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome and monkeypox, said AVMA Immediate Past President Roger Mahr, DVM. In the past 25 years, he noted, 75% of emerging human diseases have been zoonotic in origin.

As one example of the teamwork needed to combat such illnesses, consider that the 1999 arrival of West Nile virus in the U.S. was detected by a persistent pathologist at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. Cases of West Nile virus, never before seen in the United States, had been incorrectly identified as St. Louis encephalitis.

In addition to infectious diseases, there are chronic diseases that are plaguing humans and their pets, said AMA President Ron Davis, MD. He helped launch the joint endeavor, called the One Health Initiative, at the AVMA's annual meeting last month in Washington, D.C. The AMA adopted policy in June pledging its support for the initiative.

Efforts by the nation's physicians to curb the epidemic of obesity among their patients is mirrored by the efforts of veterinarians to combat the increasing weight of pets, Dr. Davis said. One in every four dogs and cats in the Western world is obese, stated a 2005 National Academies of Science. The causes are too much food, too little exercise and too much junk food. "Sounds familiar to me from taking care of humans," Dr. Davis noted.