Int J Infect. 2020 July; 7(3):e106028. Published online 2020 July 26. doi: 10.5812/iji.106028. Letter Zoonotic Infections Overview: A Nigerian Perspective Faisal Muhammad 1, 2, * 1 Department of Public Health, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Department of Social Work, School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, University of Information Technology and Sciences, Dhaka, Bangladesh * Corresponding author: Department of Public Health, Daffodil International University (DIU) ,102 and 102/1 Shukrabad, Mirpur Road Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Email: fokkanya@yahoo.com Received 2020 June 02; Revised 2020 June 28; Accepted 2020 July 08. Keywords: Zoonotic, Infections, Public Health, Nigeria Dear Editor, Zoonoses are diseases that are naturally transmissi- ble between the human and vertebrate animals, through agents such as bacterial, fungal, and viral agents. Research shows that over the past 10 years, about three-fourths of the new diseases that have affected human beings globally have been caused by pathogens originating from an ani- mal or products of animal origin (1). One-fifth of the mor- bidity and mortality in the least developed countries are di- rectly or indirectly associated with endemic zoonoses (2). Neglected zoonotic diseases (NZDs) are another serious is- sue among poor nations, including Nigeria. These diseases are called neglected because they mostly affect poor popu- lations who normally live nearness to wild or domestic an- imals in areas where there is a scarcity of health and suffi- cient sanitary conditions. These diseases are also neglected because their burden is habitually concentrated in devel- oping countries, in which the effort in the present day has focused on other diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc. (3). The transmission of these diseases can occur wherever humans live in both rural and urban set- tings. Contact with wildlife has increased nowadays due to the urbanization and the increased ecological changes that favor the development of some vectors of infection. Neglected zoonotic diseases take advantage of a double burden on the standard of life of people by ruining not only the quality of their health but also the life of livestock on which they laboriously rely for their survival. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), eight diseases are identified as NZDs, including bovine tuberculosis, rabies, anthrax, echinococcosis, brucel- losis, leishmaniasis, cysticercosis, and African human trypanosomiasis. Some NZDs such as brucellosis are considered important public health problems across the globe (4). Currently, many zoonotic infections are char- acterized to be endemic in Nigeria, such as Lassa fever, tuberculosis, yellow fever, trypanosomiasis, rabies, etc. There are also some sporadic cases of zoonotic infections like ascariasis, scabies, strongyloidiasis, etc. (5). In Nigeria, Lassa fever (LF) is an endemic disease that causes consid- erable illness and death. An outbreak of LF occurred just recently from January to May 2018. During this outbreak, a total of 1,893 cases were reported, leading to about 106 deaths among the laboratory-confirmed cases (6). An outbreak of yellow fever has been recorded in Nigeria long ago. The yellow fever outbreaks affected around 120,000 people between 1987 and 1996 across the Nigerian states. Recently in 2017, a new confirmed case of yellow fever was reported in Kwara State after 21 years of not reporting a confirmed case across the country (7). Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is also endemic in Nigeria. However, BTB is still poorly controlled in Nigeria (8). A trypanosomiasis agglu- tination test was conducted among 474 human subjects, and about 9.6% of them were tested positive (9). A study among 149 suspected dog bite cases in Nigeria reported six confirmed cases of human rabies (10). Neglected zoonotic diseases have a dual burden because they can be devastat- ing to both public and animal health. Targeting the animal reservoir to have optimal health may reduce the risk of NZDs for humans. Control and prevention measures of NZDs originating from animals should focus on interven- tions that target animal reservoirs combined with close collaborations and partnerships between veterinarians, physicians, and other stakeholders. Footnotes Authors’ Contribution: The whole work was done by Faisal Muhammad. Copyright © 2020, International Journal of Infection. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.