CFIA FA3STnet (Federated Advanced/Adaptive/Anticipatory S&T Networks)
Infectious Diseases
Challenge and Impact for Canadians:
The need to address emerging infectious disease threats to human, animal, and ecosystem health in
Canada in an integrated manner that will enhance understanding, monitoring and mitigation of
those threats.
Addressing the threats from infectious diseases will have a high impact for Canadians in terms
of their own health, and in our ability to better address economic and trade issues through the
development of improved tools for intelligence gathering for surveillance and mitigation. Risk
modelling of zoonotic diseases would enhance our understanding of the determinants of
disease persistence within populations and interspecies transmission, thus enabling the
identification of the most cost effective and safest avenues for infection control and prevention
in both human and animal populations.
Rationale for this FA3STnet:
 The need to address infectious diseases is a fundamental priority for federal
departments responsible for human health, agricultural sustainability, international
trade, and managed natural resources.
 The federal government works to strengthen Canada’s overall capacity to prepare for
and respond to any emergency where the health of the population may be affected,
including by infectious diseases, which know no borders. There is a continuous need to
address issues linked to new and emerging diseases as well as known zoonotic diseases.
In particular, certain pathogens can infect several different species and may cross
between humans, farmed animals and wild populations. Many important infectious
diseases, such as influenza, SARS and Ebola, have animal reservoirs that are critical to
the virulence, transmission and outbreak parameters of the disease.
 Within the mandates of partnering SBDAs, there is an ongoing need to provide scientific
guidance and policy coordination across organisations with varying responsibilities for
infectious diseases pertaining to human health, farmed and wild animal health, and
food safety sectors.
 Due to the trans-sectorial nature, such research endeavors face logistical challenges
such as the coordination of R&D activities across the various organisations to support
the development of tools to address risk. In order to effectively address infectious
disease risks an integrated approach is needed that addresses the problem from several
angles. Such an approach is ideally suited to a FA3STnet horizontal collaborative project
because of the complementary questions that can be addressed within the domains of
human, farmed animal, and wild population health, and that link directly to food safety
because of movements of diseases between wild and domesticated species.
 This FA3STnet would better position the federal S&T community to manipulate and
analyze the large amounts of data on emerging threats that is currently available, as
well as enhance the federal risk mitigation capacity. For example
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Loss of biodiversity due to climate change and other events can affect the transmission
of infectious disease through changes in the abundance and distribution of the host or
vector, their behaviour and/or taxonomic diversity. Despite many technological
advances, an integrated approach is needed to understand, model and predict disease
systems and the effects of biodiversity across a range of spatial and temporal scales is
paramount to inform evidence-based risk management policies.
The need to protect and conserve Canada’s Biodiversity and Ecosystems has recently
been identified by the Genomics Research and Development Initiative (GRDI) as one of
two top priorities for Phase VI interdepartmental Shared priority research. This FA3ST
can leverage interdepartmental federal research and capacity in this area.
Partners:
 The integrated scientific management of infectious diseases is an area of competitive
strength in Canada. This area is of high interest both domestically and internationally
given the transboundary risk of infectious diseases and recent human and livestock
outbreaks that have had devastating economic and humanitarian impacts.
 There is strong existing capacity and some level of interdepartmental collaboration with
AAFC; CFIA; DFO; EC; HC; NRC; and PHAC.