Farming scene in the highlands of Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

Zoonotic diseases, or zoonoses, are diseases that can be passed from animals to people. Nearly two-thirds of emerging infectious diseases affecting people are zoonotic and about 60% of all human pathogens are zoonotic.

Zoonoses such as brucellosis, anthrax and rabies are endemic in eastern Africa and yet formally published research studies on zoonoses in the region are hard to come by; useful research findings remain tucked away in the libraries of universities and other research institutions in form of working papers and students’ theses: the so-called ‘grey literature’.

In order to bring to the fore the wealth of unpublished research on zoonoses from studies carried out in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, the first-ever regional conference on zoonotic diseases in eastern Africa was held in Naivasha, Kenya on 9-12…