Global Study: Participation in One Health Networks and Involvement in COVID-19 Response Activities

PURPOSE: This global study examined whether being part of a One Health Network (OHN) was associated with being involved in COVID-19 response activities at the early stages of the pandemic. Barriers to workforce involvement in the pandemic response and the perceived value of OHN activities were studied to inform future targeted evidence-based strategies for workforce capacity-building. METHODS & MATERIALS: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study, using an online questionnaire that was globally distributed in July-August 2020. With a snowball sampling approach via OHN listservs, social media, and further sharing, we aimed to reach individuals in the global health workforce across locations, organizations, and sectors to survey their participation in OHN activities and involvement in COVID-19 response. RESULTS: The sample included 1050 respondents from various types of organizations and work sectors, from 94 countries across all WHO regions. Being part of an OHN was positively associated with involvement in the COVID-19 response (odds ratio: 1.8, 95% confidence interval: 1.3 - 2.4). The OHN activities most indicated as useful during COVID-19 pandemic by the survey respondents included 'increased public awareness of One Health' and 'networking with professionals across sectors with common interests'. Overall, 44% of survey respondents who were part of an OHN found OHN activities very or extremely helpful to their COVID-19 response. Lack of opportunities was a commonly reported barrier to involvement in COVID-19 response globally, and lack of funding was a barrier particularly in the WHO Africa region. CONCLUSION: This study provides a snapshot of the multisectoral response to COVID-19 and an assessment of the contribution of OHNs. The lessons learned during this pandemic can be used to identify measures to improve global health capacity, including OHN activities to build and strengthen workforce response to future global health challenges

Participation in One Health Networks and Involvement in the COVID-19 Pandemic Response: A Global Study

The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies a One Health issue at the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health that requires collaboration across sectors to manage it successfully. The global One Health community includes professionals working in many different fields including human medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, ecosystem health, and, increasingly, social sciences. The aims of this cross-sectional study were to describe the involvement of the global One Health community in COVID-19 pandemic response activities. One Health networks (OHNs) have formed globally to serve professionals with common interests in collaborative approaches. We assessed the potential association between being part of an OHN and involvement in COVID-19 response activities. Data were collected in July-August 2020 using an online questionnaire that addressed work characteristics, perceived connection to OHNs, involvement in COVID-19 pandemic response activities, and barriers and facilitators to the involvement. The sample included 1,050 respondents from 94 countries across a range of organizations and work sectors including, but not restricted to, those typically associated with a One Health approach. Sixty-four percent of survey respondents indicated involvement in pandemic response activities. Being part of an OHN was positively associated with being involved in the COVID-19 response (odds ratio: 1.8, 95% confidence interval: 1.3–2.4). Lack of opportunities was a commonly reported barrier to involvement globally, with lack of funding the largest barrier in the WHO African region. This insight into diverse workforce involvement in the pandemic helps fill a gap in the global health workforce and public health education literature. An expanded understanding of the perceived roles and value of OHNs can inform targeted interventions to improve public health education and workforce capacity to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies

Standardizing output-based surveillance to control non-regulated cattle diseases:Aspiring for a single general regulatory framework in the European Union

Several European countries have implemented country specific programmes to control cattle diseases with little or no regulation in the European Union (EU). These control programmes vary between member states, impairing a confident comparison of freedom from disease when cattle originate from different countries. In order to facilitate safe trade, there is a need to support the development of transparent methods that enable comparison of outputs of surveillance, control or eradication programmes. The aim of the COST Action (CA 17110), Standardizing OUtput-based surveillance to control Non-regulated Diseases in the EU (SOUND control), is the development of a generic and joint understanding of the requirements and characteristics needed for a flexible output-based framework. This framework should be able to substantiate the confidence of disease freedom and cost-effectiveness of heterogeneous surveillance, control or eradication programmes for cattle diseases in the EU. This project supports other initiatives in the development of an output-based framework which will subsequently facilitate safe trade and support the improvement of disease control measures, which is of great importance as the cattle sector contributes to one third of the total gross production value of EU agriculture

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic

The current global systemic crisis reveals how globalised societies are unprepared to face a pandemic. Beyond the dramatic loss of human life, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread disturbances in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems in many countries across the world. Resilience describes the capacities of natural and human systems to prevent, react to and recover from shocks. Societal resilience to the current COVID-19 pandemic relates to the ability of societies in maintaining their core functions while minimising the impact of the pandemic and other societal effects. Drawing on the emerging evidence about resilience in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems, this paper delineates a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to COVID-19. Such an understanding provides the foundation for an integrated approach to build societal resilience to current and future pandemics

Cross-Over between Discrete and Continuous Protein Structure Space: Insights into Automatic Classification and Networks of Protein Structures

Structural classifications of proteins assume the existence of the fold, which is an intrinsic equivalence class of protein domains. Here, we test in which conditions such an equivalence class is compatible with objective similarity measures. We base our analysis on the transitive property of the equivalence relationship, requiring that similarity of A with B and B with C implies that A and C are also similar. Divergent gene evolution leads us to expect that the transitive property should approximately hold. However, if protein domains are a combination of recurrent short polypeptide fragments, as proposed by several authors, then similarity of partial fragments may violate the transitive property, favouring the continuous view of the protein structure space. We propose a measure to quantify the violations of the transitive property when a clustering algorithm joins elements into clusters, and we find out that such violations present a well defined and detectable cross-over point, from an approximately transitive regime at high structure similarity to a regime with large transitivity violations and large differences in length at low similarity. We argue that protein structure space is discrete and hierarchic classification is justified up to this cross-over point, whereas at lower similarities the structure space is continuous and it should be represented as a network. We have tested the qualitative behaviour of this measure, varying all the choices involved in the automatic classification procedure, i.e., domain decomposition, alignment algorithm, similarity score, and clustering algorithm, and we have found out that this behaviour is quite robust. The final classification depends on the chosen algorithms. We used the values of the clustering coefficient and the transitivity violations to select the optimal choices among those that we tested. Interestingly, this criterion also favours the agreement between automatic and expert classifications. As a domain set, we have selected a consensus set of 2,890 domains decomposed very similarly in SCOP and CATH. As an alignment algorithm, we used a global version of MAMMOTH developed in our group, which is both rapid and accurate. As a similarity measure, we used the size-normalized contact overlap, and as a clustering algorithm, we used average linkage. The resulting automatic classification at the cross-over point was more consistent than expert ones with respect to the structure similarity measure, with 86% of the clusters corresponding to subsets of either SCOP or CATH superfamilies and fewer than 5% containing domains in distinct folds according to both SCOP and CATH. Almost 15% of SCOP superfamilies and 10% of CATH superfamilies were split, consistent with the notion of fold change in protein evolution. These results were qualitatively robust for all choices that we tested, although we did not try to use alignment algorithms developed by other groups. Folds defined in SCOP and CATH would be completely joined in the regime of large transitivity violations where clustering is more arbitrary. Consistently, the agreement between SCOP and CATH at fold level was lower than their agreement with the automatic classification obtained using as a clustering algorithm, respectively, average linkage (for SCOP) or single linkage (for CATH). The networks representing significant evolutionary and structural relationships between clusters beyond the cross-over point may allow us to perform evolutionary, structural, or functional analyses beyond the limits of classification schemes. These networks and the underlying clusters are available at http://ub.cbm.uam.es/research/ProtNet.ph

Prevalência e fatores associados ao ganho de peso gestacional excessivo em unidades de saúde do sudoeste da Bahia

RESUMO: Objetivo: Determinar a prevalência do ganho de peso semanal excessivo em gestantes e verificar a associação com fatores demográficos, socioeconômicos, obstétricos, antropométricos e comportamentais. Metodologia: Trata-se de um estudo transversal realizado com 328 gestantes assistidas em todas as unidades de saúde da zona urbana de Vitória da Conquista, Bahia. Os dados foram coletados no período de maio de 2010 a junho de 2011. O ganho de peso semanal foi avaliado de acordo com as recomendações atuais do Institute of Medicine (IOM). A associação entre os fatores em estudo e o ganho de peso semanal excessivo foi verificada nas gestantes, no segundo e terceiro trimestres, por meio da análise de regressão de Poisson com variância robusta. Resultados: A prevalência de ganho de peso semanal excessivo nas gestantes do segundo e terceiro trimestres foi de 42,5%. Os fatores determinantes do ganho ponderal semanal excessivo foram: renda familiar < 1 salário mínimo (RP: 2,65; IC95% 1,18 - 4,83) e estado nutricional pré-gestacional sobrepeso/obesidade (RP: 1,33; IC95% 1,01 - 1,75). Conclusão: Os resultados do estudo reforçam a importância do monitoramento do ganho de peso durante a gestação. A avaliação do ganho de peso semanal possibilita a realização de intervenções precoces visando a prevenção do ganho de peso total excessivo e suas consequências para a mãe e para a criança

Overview of cattle diseases listed under category C, D or E in the animal health law for wich control programmes are in place within Europe

13 páginas, 5 figuras, 3 tablas.The COST action “Standardising output-based surveillance to control non-regulated diseases of cattle in the European Union (SOUND control),” aims to harmonise the results of surveillance and control programmes (CPs) for non-EU regulated cattle diseases to facilitate safe trade and improve overall control of cattle infectious diseases. In this paper we aimed to provide an overview on the diversity of control for these diseases in Europe. A non-EU regulated cattle disease was defined as an infectious disease of cattle with no or limited control at EU level, which is not included in the European Union Animal health law Categories A or B under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/2002. A CP was defined as surveillance and/or intervention strategies designed to lower the incidence, prevalence, mortality or prove freedom from a specific disease in a region or country. Passive surveillance, and active surveillance of breeding bulls under Council Directive 88/407/EEC were not considered as CPs. A questionnaire was designed to obtain country-specific information about CPs for each disease. Animal health experts from 33 European countries completed the questionnaire. Overall, there are 23 diseases for which a CP exists in one or more of the countries studied. The diseases for which CPs exist in the highest number of countries are enzootic bovine leukosis, bluetongue, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, bovine viral diarrhoea and anthrax (CPs reported by between 16 and 31 countries). Every participating country has on average, 6 CPs (min–max: 1–13) in place. Most programmes are implemented at a national level (86%) and are applied to both dairy and non-dairy cattle (75%). Approximately one-third of the CPs are voluntary, and the funding structure is divided between government and private resources. Countries that have eradicated diseases like enzootic bovine leukosis, bluetongue, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis and bovine viral diarrhoea have implemented CPs for other diseases to further improve the health status of cattle in their country. The control of non-EU regulated cattle diseases is very heterogenous in Europe. Therefore, the standardising of the outputs of these programmes to enable comparison represents a challenge.Peer reviewe

Development of an In Vitro Microelectric Cell Sensing Technique to Assess Cytotoxicity of Ocular Irritants

In this study, a novel alternative in vitro method for assessing ocular irritancy was developed. This was completed by evaluating the cytotoxicity of nine compounds exposed to a panel of three cell lines using a microelectric cell sensing technology, the xCELLigenceTM RTCA MP. With this novel method, it was successfully demonstrated that the cell lines used in the study were able to show different responses to irritants and non-irritants, but depending on the compounds tested and measures of cytotoxicity used, it was inconclusive if one particular cell line or measure was superior for ranking the test compounds. This study also served to elucidate the difficulties that surround the complex problem of developing alternative methods to the current gold standard in vivo Draize test