Historical background
From zoonoses research to One Health
The foundation of the One Health Patform is the German Research Platform for Zoonoses, or Zoonoses Platform for short. From 2009 to 2023, an interdisciplinary research community grew up in Germany under the umbrella of the Zoonoses Platform, which promoted zoonoses research in Germany across disciplines and institutions and realized the first networking between human and veterinary research areas. In December 2023, the One Health Platform was founded, which will replace and expand the Zoonoses Platform. More information on the history of the Zoonoses Platform and projects funded under the umbrella of the Zoonoses Platform can be found below.
History of the Zoonoses platform
In March 2006, a research agreement on zoonoses was concluded between the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL; then still BMELV), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG). As part of this research agreement, funding amounting to €60 million was made available with the aim of strengthening basic scientific research in order to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of zoonoses and thus the health protection of humans and animals in the long term.
This research agreement was followed by three major steps. Firstly, due to the increasing spread of avian influenza pathogens (highly pathogenic influenza virus type H5N1) and the global incidence of disease, the Federal Government's Influenza Research Program (FSI) was initiated in March 2006 with research projects at the Robert Koch Institute, Friedrich Loeffler Institute and Paul Ehrlich Institute. The aim was to close the specific and practically relevant knowledge gaps on H5N1 avian influenza and the risk of a pandemic and to develop the basis for the necessary further investigations in the subsequent program.
In a second step, the BMBF funded 11 interdisciplinary research networks on zoonotic infectious diseases with a total of over 95 sub-projects.
In a third step, the National Research Platform for Zoonoses, which was funded by the BMBF until 2023 and ultimately united more than 1,000 members under its umbrella, was founded in 2009 to coordinate the collaboration of FSI projects as part of the Influenza Immediate Action Program and the interdisciplinary BMBF research networks on zoonotic infectious diseases in Germany and to enable broad horizontal networking between the disciplines of human and veterinary medicine, which had previously been rather poorly networked.
Research funding under the umbrella of the zoonoses platform
Pilot, cross-sectional and, from 2019, interdisciplinary doctoral projects were funded under the umbrella of the Zoonoses Platform.
Below you will find an overview of funded projects.
Brochure on the BMBF zoonosis networks:
