Interview with Prof. Dr. Marion Koopmans: “The health of humans, animals, and nature are interconnected.”

In a recent interview with DOQ Prof. Dr. Marion Koopmans shared her expertise about the One Health Approach and the recent publication: ‘One Health approach uncovers emergence and dynamics of Usutu and West Nile viruses in the Netherlands’ in the Nature Communication Journal.

The health of humans, animals, and nature are interconnected.

In recent years, viruses that were previously only found in southern Europe have been appearing more frequently in the Netherlands. Both the West Nile virus and the Usutu virus are now circulating among Dutch birds and mosquitoes. Virologist Marion Koopmans (Erasmus MC) sees a clear lesson in this: “Human health cannot be considered separately from the health of animals and ecosystems. That is exactly what One Health is about.”

In a recent publication in the journal Nature Communications, Koopmans and colleagues describe eight years of research on the spread of these arboviruses. “We wanted to understand what mosquitoes, birds, and viruses are actually present in the Netherlands, and which conditions determine whether they can come together,” she explains. “You could wait for an outbreak to occur, but it’s better to understand when and why one is likely to happen. That is the core of a One Health approach: looking at the whole system and learning from it.”

Read the full article here (in Dutch).

Source: DOQ.nl