For those whose work deals with threats from infectious agents, IMED 2016 once again brought leading scientists, clinicians and policy makers to Vienna to present new knowledge and breakthroughs and discuss how to discover, detect, understand, prevent and respond to outbreaks of emerging pathogens. 

Since the last IMED in 2014, newly emerged diseases and outbreaks of familiar ones have continued to challenge us. The West African Ebola outbreak presented an unparalleled crisis of global proportions and there are many lessons yet to be learned from it. MERS coronavirus continued to challenge the Middle East, spreading dangerously in the healthcare setting, and showed its global threat with a major outbreak in the Republic of Korea. Eruptions of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry, wild birds and humans continue to occur. Zika virus appeared for the first time in the Americas, spreading widely in this region with plentiful competent vectors. A frightening role in fetal malformation has emerged. Diseases at the human-wildlife interface ranging from rabies to plague to Nipah continue to draw our attention. Growing resistance by pathogens to all types of therapeutic agents raises fundamental obstacles to our ability to respond to outbreaks and pandemics. We have witnessed the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict and the threat of intentional use of biological agents for nefarious purposes remains as real as ever. The European migrant crisis has raised questions regarding the re-emergence of infectious diseases and the monitoring and screening of migrants arriving in Europe and elsewhere. 

Over 800 public health professionals and veterinarians attended the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance in Vienna.    

Alexandra Vokaty, PAHO/WHO, Trinidad and Tobago and Chair of the CaribVET Veterinary Public Health Working Group and member of the CaribVET Salmonellosis Working Group, attended the meeting.

There was significant One Health content in the presentations, particularly:

• “One World One Health: Transboundary Emerging Diseases in Humans, Animals and Wildlife”
• Several sessions on zoonotic viruses, and models that are attempting to predict the next virus that will spill over from animals to humans
• FAO’s global early warning signs for health threats at the human-animal ecosystem interface
• New research in Italy into a monoclonal antibiotic cocktail as a treatment for rabies in the central nervous system
• European CDC presentation on Trends in Antimicrobial Resistance in Europe.  I was particularly interested in learning that there is now Livestock Associated MRSA found in Europe.

Alexandra Vokaty presented a poster on Leptospirosis in the Caribbean: a One Health approach

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