Brucellosis: 'One Health' challenges and opportunities

Brucellosis is an ancient disease with host-specific evolutionary mechanisms that allow itto hide from or manipulate cellular immunity and achieve intracellular persistence. The disease yields low fatality rates but can cause substantial disabilities. Zoonotic brucellosis remains widespread and neglected in many areas despite notable advances in science, technology, and management in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The burden appears to remain greatest, and yet most under-prioritised globally, amongst pastoral peoples and small-scale livestock farmers. Capacity building for zoonotic brucellosis diagnosis, surveillance, management, and treatment in developing countries faces numerous challenges. Adaptive risk management can provide a framework to build stakeholder support for addressing the complexities and uncertainties, and learning from management actions. The challenges and opportunities for brucellosis management must be recognised as fundamentally multivariate, multifaceted, and integrative; it is thus crucial for veterinary, public health, and wildlife/conservation professions to collaboratively develop, adopt and promulgate a brucellosis One Health paradigm.