Impact Trust • Working glossary

Zoonotic disease

A disease that jumps from animals to humans, like COVID-19, SARS, or H5N1.

Details

Our Take
Increasingly familiar post-COVID; 'animal-to-human disease' is plainer. Part of the polycrisis web: zoonotic disease risk increases with deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change -- making pandemic preparedness inseparable from environmental action. A concrete example of why siloed thinking fails.
Examples of Use
Epidemiology, WHO, One Health
Synonyms/Variants
Zoonosis
Typical everyday wording
Animal-human disease transmission