Major zoonotic diseases of public health importance in Bangladesh

Abstract

Zoonotic diseases cause repeated outbreaks in humans globally. The majority of emerging infections in humans are zoonotic. COVID19 is an ideal example of a recently identified emerging zoonotic disease, causing a global pandemic. Anthropogenic factors such as modernisation of agriculture and livestock farming, wildlife hunting, the destruction of wild animal habitats, mixing wild and domestic animals, wildlife trading, changing food habits and urbanisation could drive the emergence of zoonotic diseases in humans. Since 2001, Bangladesh has been reporting many emerging zoonotic disease outbreaks such as nipah, highly pathogenic avian influenza, pandemic H1N1, and COVID19. There are many other potential zoonotic pathogens such as Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Kyasanur forest disease virus and Crimean– Congo haemorrhagic fever that may emerge in the future. However, we have a limited understanding of zoonotic diseases’ overall risk in humans and associated factors that drive the emergence of zoonotic pathogens. This narrative review summarised the major emerging, reemerging, neglected and other potential zoonotic diseases in Bangladesh and their associated risk factors. Nipah virus and Bacillus anthracis caused repeated outbreaks in humans. More than 300 human cases with Nipah virus infection were reported since the first outbreak in 2001. The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) caused more than 550 outbreaks in poultry, and eight human cases were reported so far since 2007. People of Bangladesh are frequently exposed to zoonotic pathogens due to close interaction with domestic and peridomestic animals. The rapidly changing intensified animal– human– ecosystem interfaces and risky practices increase the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. The narrative review's findings are useful to draw attention to the risk and emergence of zoonotic diseases to public health policymakers in Bangladesh and the application of onehealth approach to address this public health threat. We conducted a narrative review of the published literature with a focus on zoonotic diseases reported from Bangladesh. Relevant research articles, review articles, abstracts, case reports, communications, letters, book chapters, conference proceedings and other relevant documents were searched in MEDLINE, PubMed, PubMed Central and Google Scholar. Specific

Full document