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Initiative will put spotlight on OVC's research, teaching roles in animal-related public health
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Preventing and controlling emerging animal-related diseases that threaten public health is the key goal of a one-of-a-kind centre to be based at the Ontario Veterinary College.
The Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses (CHPAZ) will bring together scientists to enhance research and more closely link researchers and agencies involved in addressing new or re-emerging diseases such as bird flu, SARS, E. coli 0157:H7 and West Nile virus that threaten the health of humans.
CPHAZ members hope to further integrate the efforts of numerous University researchers from four colleges and the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety with those of external agencies. The latter include municipal and regional health organizations, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the Guelph-based Laboratory for Food-Borne Zoonoses, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre, and the proposed Ontario Health Protection and Promotion Agency.
Research in this area has long occurred at Guelph, but the new body will bring greater co-ordination to those efforts, says retired pathobiology professor Carlton Gyles, who helped organize the group.
“The centre will bring together groups of people who are currently to some extent isolated by department,” says Gyles, adding that another goal is to increase public awareness of OVC's research and teaching roles in animal-related public health.
“It's important to put a spotlight on what we do because that will enhance our ability to better understand and control infectious diseases that people can acquire from animals,” he says. “We are the only veterinary school with expertise and resources in animal-related health research. Other institutions are focused on other aspects of public health.”
CPHAZ members expect that the new group's multidisciplinary approach to solving complex public health problems will attract more research funding. Already, the centre has submitted a $10.8-million funding application to build and equip dedicated space in a new building slated for construction directly south of OVC.
That space would bring together experts both inside and outside the University in disease surveillance, data analysis and microbiological research, says Gyles.
Prof. John Prescott, chair of the Department of Pathobiology, led that application to the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
“Because of the dramatic and increasing convergence of human and animal infectious diseases that we're seeing recently, we really need a new global infectious disease workforce that gets away from the disciplinary and sectoral boundaries that may have limited us in the past,” says Prescott. “We believe CPHAZ will be an important Ontario response to the new dynamic of global infectious disease.”
The centre will include 10 principal members from OVC. Among nearly 40 collaborators, many are from the college's four departments and the Animal Health Laboratory, as well as other U of G units, notably the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and the Faculty of Environmental Sciences. Collaborating universities are Trent, McMaster, Brock and Montreal.
The centre will focus on food-animal diseases (E. coli, bird flu, swine flu), companion-animal infections (pets in hospital visits), wildlife zoonoses (West Nile virus, leptospirosis) and crosscutting epidemiological studies on zoonotic and enteric infections.
Gyles says forces such as globalization have made such zoonotic diseases a major public health threat worldwide. Integrating research and surveillance efforts is expected to help in predicting problems and making the right decisions to tackle or head off threats.
Far from merely reacting to headlines about SARS or bird flu, “we're responding to the recognition that emerging or re-emerging infections that threaten human populations have an animal basis and that we have an important role to play in developing knowledge and expertise in this area and integrating them in the public health system,” he says.
Gyles concedes that the new centre won't preclude the next SARS or flu epidemic. But it's important to have systems in place to handle public health scares, despite naysayers who may question the seriousness of such threats and the resources devoted to thwarting them, he says.
“As soon as there's a crisis, the same people tell you how badly prepared you were.”
Besides research results, he expects the centre to provide teaching opportunities, such as an international conference organized on campus and ideas for emphasizing the human health role to veterinary students.
He also hopes the new unit will provide resources that will contribute to a proposed master's program in public health in OVC.
In 2003, a Senate committee identified concerns about zoonotic diseases and the need for closer ties between animal and human health. That year also saw publication of a report recommending formation of the PHAC and stressing close links between that agency and veterinary medicine researchers and practitioners.
