Half of all infectious diseases and three-quarters of newly emerging diseases that affect people are zoonotic - that is they can be transmitted to people from animals.

Rapid increases in the global population of people and farm animals, intensification of farming systems, huge increases in the amount of meat, milk and eggs consumed, especially in developing countries, and enormous increases in the international movement of people, animals and livestock products exposes our planet to increased risk of zoonotic diseases, including potentially catastrophic epidemics.

Ceva is working with partners throughout the world to reduce the threat farm animals pose to global public health.

In countries where brucellosis is a threat, Ceva is partnering with health authorities to aid prevention. WHO estimate half a billion cases are diagnosed in people every year. They become infected by inhaling dust when handling products contaminated by Brucella bacteria, or by consuming untreated milk from infected animals. As a global leader in abortive diseases, Ceva offers both the vaccine, COGLAREV^®, and also technical expertise.

In Uganda since 2006, Ceva has been working with partners to help ‘Stamp Out Sleeping Sickness’. People become infected with the parasite that causes this serious, often fatal, disease when they are bitten by infected tsetse flies: tsetse flies mostly become infected when they bite infected cattle. Over a million of cattle have already been treated with Ceva’s drugs VERIBEN^® B12 and VERIDIUM^®, which kill the parasites, and the insecticidal spray VECTOCID^®, which kill tsetse. This reduces the risk of tsetse spreading the disease from cattle to people. Ceva is also testing the potential of controlling mosquitoes by applying insecticide to cattle - using ‘Cows against Malaria’,

In Mexico, Ceva was selected by the government to supply vaccine for a vaccination campaign against avian influenza. This followed an outbreak of the disease in 2012 which had a devastating impact on the country’s poultry industry. Ceva’s VECTORMUNE^® AI and CEVAC^® New Flukem is being used against the H5N2 virus and CEVAC^® Flu H7 K against H7N3. Close to one billion doses of vaccine have been used so far.

In Egypt, in addition to supplying more than 60 million doses of VECTORMUNE^® AI vaccine against avian influenza, Ceva also contributed to an FAO programme that created a tool to enable Egyptian authorities to assess the most appropriate vaccine strategies.

In Bangladesh, Ceva implemented a hatchery vaccination programme in which 13 million layers were protected against avian influenza using VECTORMUNE^® AI. The main objective was to prevent drops in egg production linked to disease epidemics thereby strengthening food security.

In Hungary, Ceva was pro-active in initiating a public-private partnership to plan a prevention programme for Q fever. This followed an outbreak of the disease in 2013 which saw around 200 people hospitalized. Q fever is a serious bacterial disease that can spread from cattle and small ruminants to people and cause severe public health and economic problems. Ceva produces COXEVAC^®, the world’s only vaccine against this disease which not only improves clinical impact, but also considerably reduces or even eliminates excretion of bacteria in vaccinated animals, thereby limiting contamination of the environment.