Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems

Diseases in spotlight at One Health workshop

Delegates from Scotland and China focus on approaches to zoonotic illnesses.

The challenge presented by emerging zoonotic diseases, and how best to model and control them, was the focus of an online workshop involving researchers from Scotland and China.

Their workshop entitled One health: surveillance and early warning for zoonoses, held from Edinburgh and Shanghai, included keynote presentations from leading One Health practitioners from the UK and China.

Their talks spanned contributions of One Health approaches to sustainable development, advances in surveillance and response to zoonoses.

Participants also considered the challenges of both emerging and endemic zoonoses, opportunities afforded by developments in technologies such as genomics, and modelling for pandemic preparedness.

The event, involving the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security, the University of Edinburgh’s Global Health Academy and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was supported by the British Council and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Professional development

Poster sessions augmented and complemented these themes and highlighted the contribution of new molecular and data science methods.

Mentoring was included for early career researchers in career development, interdisciplinary research skills and publication skills, as well as communication skills, science-policy interactions and entrepreneurship.

[The workshop] has strengthened collaboration between the organising institutions in China – NIPD at China CDC; School of Global Health, Chinese Center for Tropical Diseases Research, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) School of Medicine; the SJTUUoE One Health Center – and the University of Edinburgh, and with partner institutions in both countries.

– Workshop summary report

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