Zoonosis: social and environmental connections in the Mexico-United States border region

Abstract

The emerging risks facing humanity have highlighted the need to address and prevent challenges through multilateral preventive strategies. The Mexico-United States (US) border is a region with great biological biodiversity and both countries shared a similar history and intense socioeconomic, and cultural interrelationships. Also, it has an extraordinary ecological contrast, resulting in an enormous biological diversity in a broad Nearctic-Neotropical transition zone. This dynamic region has important disparities due to the lack of bilateral strategies to face emerging issues (e.g., infectious diseases) in an integrated and holistic approach. In this context, we describe the various socio-ecosystemic contexts of the shared border and present different diseases transmitted, and different zoonoses that affect ecosystemic public health that must be addressed under collaborative schemes that can develop preventive policies under the One Health approach with emphasis on the Mexican zone. We describe the social determinants of health issues for the border, but we add ecological contexts infrequently studied in classical epidemiological approaches. Strategies towards One Health require international and multidisciplinary approaches that strengthen diagnostic capabilities, recognizing social, and environmental challenges. Recognizing these aspects will allow the establishment of joint monitoring, prevention, and mitigation strategies with benefits for both countries.

Keywords: Disease transmission; Environment degradation; Marginalization; Migration; One Health approach.

Fig. 1

The Mexico-U.S. border region faces a complex interplay of factors contributing to infectious disease risk, including high human migration, environmental degradation, and changes in wildlife dynamics due to the border wall. These factors interact to create scenarios of increased risk and exposure to various infectious diseases, highlighting the need for a comprehensive One Health approach to disease prevention and control in this region