Risk Assessment Tools from the One Health Perspective: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Background: 61% of the infections around the world that have emerged to date are zoonotic. Evidence warns that the threat posed by zoonoses is on the rise, and the risk of a new pandemic is higher now than ever. Early identification of risk, populations at risk, and risk of transmission are essential steps towards a prevention, preparation and response to outbreaks. This review aims to look at the tools available for identifying and estimating risks and threats from one health perspective and finally propose a list of indicators which could assess the risk of transmission of disease at the humans, animals and the environment intersection. Methods: The databases like PubMed, google scholar, Embase and Scopus were used to extract the relevant articles. A search was carried out using a keyword. A total of 1311 articles were listed initially after the search and reviewed. Out of 1311, only 26 tools which assessed the risk of diseases mainly infectious or were relevant to risk of transmission of any infectious diseases were included in the review. Results: The tools included in this review involve risk assessment at the environmental, animal and human dimensions. The tools are used to evaluate the contamination of the environment due to chemicals or toxins or the risk of transmission of infection due to environmental factors like air contamination, to identify the animal diseases like bovine respiratory disease and foot and mouth disease and to estimate the human health risk at the community or individual levels. Conclusion: Risk assessment tools are an essential part of the prevention of pandemics. These tools are helpful in assessing the risk of transmission of infections either from human to human, between human and animals, between animals and animals and so on. Thus this review gives us an insight into the existing risk assessment tools and the need for a One Health risk assessment tools to prevent outbreaks in future. It also provides a list of factors that can be included in a one health risk assessment tool.