Animal health and pharma industries ‘should be more closely linked’

The animal health and pharmaceutical industries should be more closely linked, experts in the field have stated.

PMLive reports that at this week's One Health Congress in Amsterdam, representatives from GlaxoSmithKline, Zoetis and other industry bodies called for a tighter approach to the way the animal health and pharma sectors are linked in a bid to prevent diseases spreading.

Figures show that over 60 percent of infections in humans originate from wild animals, while 75 percent of emerging diseases are also zoonotic.

Drugs often need to be developed in response to illness outbreaks, but the experts are calling for greater work to be done by the pharma industry to prevent such infections from being transmitted from animals to humans in the first place.

Alejandro Bernal, executive vice-president of Zoetis and area president for the company's Europe, Africa and Middle East divisions, explained: "An integrated human-animal approach, rather than the classical, separate approach is needed. The current collaboration and business model is not optimal."