Global hotspots and correlates of emerging zoonotic diseases
EcoHealth Alliance · Imperial Consultants · +5 more institutions
Abstract
Zoonoses originating from wildlife represent a significant threat to global health, security and economic growth, and combatting their emergence is a public health priority. However, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying their emergence remains rudimentary. Here we update a global database of emerging infectious disease (EID) events, create a novel measure of reporting effort, and fit boosted regression tree models to analyze the demographic, environmental and biological correlates of their occurrence. After accounting for reporting effort, we show that zoonotic EID risk is elevated in forested tropical regions experiencing land-use changes and where wildlife biodiversity (mammal species richness) is…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 55.02
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 62
Authors
9Topics & keywords
- Wildlife
- Geography
- Biodiversity hotspot
- Biodiversity
- Species richness
- Wildlife trade
- Public health
- Environmental health