Guest edited by David O’Callaghan, Jun-Xia Song, Adrian M. Whatmore, Caterina Guzmán Verri, and Xiao-Nong Zhou
A thematic series published in Infectious Diseases of Poverty.
Brucellosis is a widespread zoonosis mainly transmitted from cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and camels through direct contact with blood, placenta, fetuses or uterine secretions, or through consumption of contaminated raw animal products. In endemic areas, human brucellosis has serious public health consequences. It is a disease of poverty, a huge socioeconomic cost not only occurred when livestock infected with bacteria of the genus Brucella, but also as human brucellosis that starts as a debilitating acute infection and can become chronic with many complications.
In most countries, brucellosis is a notifiable disease. Control of brucellosis requires a ‘One Health’ strategy. Animal and human health must work together to prevent human infection by raising awareness, food-safety measures, occupational hygiene and laboratory safety, and good performance of surveillance in human and animal populations. We need to develop better tools to be used in control programmes, efficient and safe vaccines, and diagnostic tests with high specificity and sensitivity that will be accessible to low income countries.
The series covers a wide range of research interests ranging from animal-human transmission, intervention and case management, diagnostics and veterinary/human medicine, strain identification and molecular epidemiology.
