A One Health Plea: Discovery Channel’s MOSQUITO World Premiere Brings More Hope
Lea-Ann Germinder
A perfect storm or a perfect opportunity? I’ll take the opportunity! We are promoting Discovery Channel’s world premiere of MOSQUITO for just the same reasons Dr. Roger Mahr, past president of the AVMA, championed the One Health Initiative, a collaboration of all medical professionals, including the veterinary profession, to come together to solve some of the most perplexing global health problems.
And, as MOSQUITO posits, what greater deadly threat does any animal on the planet pose to humans than the mosquito? The Goodnewsforpets team has covered mosquito-borne diseases affecting cats, dogs (heartworm) and horses (West Nile, Encephalitis) for most of its 17 years of publishing. We began with covering the great works of theAmerican Heartworm Society with the late David Knight and Dr. Shelly Rubin, West Nile Virus in horses with Zoetis (formerly Wyeth Animal Health, CN), covered the updating of the feline guidelines on heartworm with the Zoetis (formerly Pfizer) Know Heartworms campaign and educating the public with Dr. Tom Nelson, and the late Jim Richards, Dipl. ACVIM, and American Association of Feline Practitioners.
The most recent examples are our coverage is John McCall, MS, PhD‘s new research demonstrating the value in fighting both the mosquito and the heartworm using a “Double Defense” approach with a topical repellent and heartworm preventive, as well as the new Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) Mosquito Control Guidelines authored by Dr. Byron Blagburn, a noted expert in the study of parasites. I personally have had the pleasure to interview him on this perplexing topic a number of times. All of these groups work tirelessly to deliver the message to pet owners to protect their pets.
In our coverage of MOSQUITO, we decided to reprint our interview with Dr. Bob Wirtz, a former CDC official and entomologist who believes in the kind of collaboration One Health can bring to modern medicine. We will continue to print more interviews with leading experts in this field. We hope by promoting this film, which focuses on the very real and serious threat the mosquito brings to humans, the threat to our pets will not be forgotten. It truly can just take one mosquito bite to bring a deadly disease to humans, but the same holds true for our pets. Let’s continue to bring attention to threats to both man and animals and solve these issues together. One Health, and that’s good news for both man and man’s best friend.
