An Article Series from All-Creaturs.org 

 

Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies

Understanding Zoonotic Disease: An Overview For Animal Sanctuaries

From The Open Sanctuary Project
August 2023

The importance of having a basic understanding of the topic of zoonoses and how zoonotic diseases spread so as to protect the human and non-human animals who come into contact with each other in sanctuary spaces or during sanctuary operations.

We talk a lot about resident health and the things caregivers can do to keep sanctuary residents happy and healthy. However, it’s not just about preventing disease introduction and spread between residents – sanctuaries also have a responsibility to think about the potential for disease transmission between humans and non-human animals.

As such, it’s important that animal caregivers and animal sanctuary leadership have at least a basic understanding of the topic of zoonoses and how zoonotic diseases spread so as to protect the human and non-human animals who come into contact with each other in sanctuary spaces or during sanctuary operations. In addition to ensuring the well-being of all, for animal organizations, prevention of zoonotic disease transmission is also important from a liability standpoint.

The topic of zoonotic disease (or zoonosis, plural zoonoses) is a complicated one – in this resource, we’ll provide a simplified overview of this important topic so that sanctuaries are better situated to mitigate the risk of zoonotic disease spread at their sanctuary and while participating in activities such as animal rescue, animal adoption, community, outreach etc.

What Is Zoonotic Disease?

If you were to look up the definition of zoonotic disease in ten different sources, you’d likely notice that there is at least some variation in how different sources define it. In fact, the authors of the article Zoonosis–Why We Should Reconsider “What’s In A Name?” point out that the World Health Organization uses at least three different definitions of zoonosis. While epidemiologists and other professionals may need a more specific definition (or may need to use different terms to identify different categories of zoonoses), we’re going to use the following definition: zoonotic diseases are infectious diseases that can be naturally transmitted between humans and other animals.

As with infectious diseases more generally, zoonotic diseases can be caused by different types of infectious agents, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, or prions (a type of protein). If you have not yet read our resource Understanding Infectious Disease, we encourage you to do so. That resource provides an overview of how infectious diseases spread, which will be helpful when considering ways in which to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease exposure in sanctuary spaces or during sanctuary activities.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

 

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