ABSTRACT
Large and devastating disease outbreaks and rapid epidemic or even pandemic pathogen spread have been of pivotal importance for human and animal health worldwide and have sparked enormous public interest. These outbreaks or clusters of human or animal diseases might be caused by known endemic pathogens or alternatively by emerging or reemerging pathogens. Emerging pathogens are either novel agents that have never been detected before due to a lack of diagnostic tools or result from their introduction into the human population from an animal source, or are agents that have modied their virulence or their geographic range (Johnson 2014). The emergence of infectious diseases (EIDs) has risen over time with a peak incidence in the 1980s (Jones et al. 2008). These EID events are dominated by zoonotic pathogens, with the majority originating from wildlife. The emergence of novel pathogens is driven by socioeconomic, environmental, and ecological factors. Multiple factors related to the pathogen itself, the reservoir, and human and livestock populations are inuencing the spatial and temporal patterns of pathogen emergence (Johnson 2014).
