Current international pandemic control activities focus on preparedness, response, and infection containment. Pandemic prevention at the source, however, is underprioritized. Pandemics generally result from zoonotic spillover events. Spillover events arise at the human and animal interface – the frontline of zoonotic disease emergence – where humans interact with wildlife, livestock, insects, pathogens, etc., where pathogens have opportunities to jump to new species and initiate local emergence. A better understanding of these interactions will help develop and improve evidence-based strategies for pandemic preparedness and public health measures.
The main objective of PANDASIA is to investigate potential pandemic drivers along nature-rural-urban gradients through a comprehensive collection of social and biological data and predictive modelling of zoonotic spillover rates and disease emergence in high-risk settings in Thailand. Specific objectives relate to factors impacting zoonotic spillover risk, such as identifying human and societal factors, wild and domestic vertebrate animal hosts, previously unrecognized viral pathogens with spillover potential. Additional objectives relate to developing ecological, epidemiological and evolutionary conceptual models to understand spillover processes including potential effects of changes in land use, land cover, climate, and human demographic factors. Finally, PANDASIA will contribute to improved health care by developing a point-of-care virus test kit prototype to identify spillover at the earliest stages and to create and test a critical public health measure – a pandemic prevention and preparedness literacy (3PL) intervention to reduce zoonotic transmission and pandemic risk. PANDASIA contributes to the medium-term outcomes of the topic, the long-term impacts described in the Work Programme, and other impacts by pursuing the project objectives, establishing credible pathways, addressing potential barriers, and by designing and implementing an effective dissemination, communication, exploitation strategy towards the target groups.
