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Pandemic Proofing the World An epidemiologist in Nairobi on the next Zika virus “I’m a veterinary epidemiologist working on global “One Health” issues at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), located in East Africa. ILRI’s headquarters lie on the outskirts of the city of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital and home to the highly fatal Nairobi sheep disease. Nairobi was also the origin of several tick fevers and the Kenya tick typhus, which caused skin lesions in people and sometimes death. The country itself is located at the edge of the spectacular Rift Valley, home to Rift Valley fever, the cause of abortions in sheep and hemorrhagic fevers that can kill people. To our east is the beautiful Kenyan coast, breeder of East Coast fever, a cancer-like disease that kills calves as well as adult cattle within three weeks of parasitic infection. Immediately to our west is Uganda, where the Zika virus was first detected in the lush Zika forest. First found in a captive rhesus monkey, caged and placed in the forest to detect yellow fever, the virus is the cause of the globally spreading birth defect known as Zika, or microencephalopathy. Still farther west flows the dark Ebola River, which gave its name to the Ebola virus, the cause of Ebola hemorrhagic fevers that recently killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa. ...”                                                     By Delia Grace, MVB, MSc, PhD Please read complete article https://howwegettonext.com/pandemic-proofing-the-world-98222a38782#.qc53tzvtt