Research Paper: Reviewing the ecological evidence base for management of emerging tropical zoonoses

Zoonotic diseases  disproportionately affect tropical communities. Management to prevent human cases is often hindered by a poor ecological understanding of zoonotic disease systems, which may involve complex communities of vector (e.g., ticks) and host species involved in pathogen transmission. Thus, management usually focuses on human medical treatments such as vaccination.

However, there may be other alternative interventions targeted at vectors or wildlife hosts which may be more effective, economical, or long lasting. Furthermore, more conventional human-focused intervention strategies could be improved through better ecological understanding of the disease system.

Here, we refine a new framework developed to identify barriers in the disease system that a pathogen needs to overcome in order to spillover to cause human disease cases, to include additional barriers pertinent to vector-borne pathogens.

We apply this refined framework to Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), a potentially deadly tick-borne infection from India which affects poor forest communities in the Western Ghats and demonstrate how it can be used to identify key knowledge gaps that that need to be addressed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of existing management and to design new interventions.