The David Livingstone Fund in Global Health and Biodiversity
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Find out more about the Medical Fund The Difference You Make
With a gift to the David Livingstone Fund in Global Health and Biodiversity, you can help the University continue in its heritage of excellence and innovation, and positively affect the lives of millions of people around the world.
With your support, we can encourage the training of ecologists and vets in these unique ecosystems, supply vital equipment and data management tools to support the monitoring of natural resources and biodiversity, and also encourage the use of diagnostics and veterinary care for wildlife and livestock populations.
Funds would also be used to create opportunities for African students in our partner institutions to acquire training and mentoring at the University of Glasgow, and for our own students to learn from and experience the challenges of undertaking science in the developing world, through exchange visits.
Gifts of £250 (£5.21 per month for four years) and over are recognised with a naming opportunity through our Gifted Scheme.
What is Global Health and Biodiversity?
In the developing world infectious diseases are still the leading cause of mortality, affecting the most impoverished and neglected communities where the burden of infectious diseases is often severely underestimated.
Impoverished tropical areas, in particular, continue to suffer substantial human and animal losses from infectious diseases such as malaria, rabies, sleeping sickness and other parasitic and viral infections, including many that have long been eradicated from developed countries.
Further to this, the emergence of new diseases and an increasing incidence of drug resistance in pathogens and vectors mean that tackling the symptoms of infectious diseases can be hampered.
Global Health and Biodiversity is a multi-disciplinary theme which will encapsulate elements of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences to provide solutions to problems around three areas of research.
Our world leading researchers in tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness, malaria, rabies, anthrax and Rift Valley Fever, are working with partners in developing countries to identify new approaches and solutions to control and to alleviate the impact of these debilitating diseases.
Changes in lifestyles, standards of living, and urbanization in developing countries are also associated with rapid increases in the burden of non-infection related conditions including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and inflammatory disease. Glasgow is uniquely placed to build on our outstanding networks to also access critical expertise in these areas.
Our teams also work to develop tools such as low-tech affordable diagnostics, surveillance tools, novel data management systems, and cost-effective vaccinations suitable for resource-limited settings.
The inter-disciplinary strengths of our research teams allow us to lead the way in developing ecological approaches to disease control, for example new environmentally-based strategies to control mosquito disease vectors and their ability to transmit disease.
Healthy ecosystems are critical for the survival of wildlife and the health and well-being of human populations that share these fragile landscapes.
Our ecologists and veterinarians are recognised as world-leaders in ‘One Health’ approaches that address the inter-dependencies of human and animal populations and their environments.
We are working with local partners in the Amazon basin and sub-Saharan Africa to understand and monitor the health of wildlife populations, identify appropriate disease control measures to reduce extinction threats to endangered populations, and develop sustainable land-use strategies that will help support the integrity of some of the world’s most valuable ecosystems.
Examples include designing vaccination programmes to protect the Ethiopian wolf from the threat of rabies, designing livestock vaccination strategies to support shared use of rangelands in East African ecosystems, and managing wildlife disease reservoirs to minimise impacts on human and livestock health.
The health and welfare of animals in Africa is compromised by many factors, including a high prevalence of infectious diseases, poor levels of husbandry and nutrition and lack of access to veterinary care.
Increasing levels of conflict between people and wildlife also creates severe welfare problems for many wild animals, with spearing, snaring and poisoning affecting several endangered wildlife species, such as elephants, lions, and African wild dogs.
Our vets and animal scientists are working in many areas of animal health to improve welfare, for example, through rabies vaccination programmes that have dramatically reduced the number of rabies cases in wild and domestic animals, and control of diseases, such as trypanosomiasis, that affects both donkeys and cattle and the livelihoods of many rural communities.
Our ecologists are working closely with local communities and wildlife partners to identify strategies that will reduce human-wildlife conflict, and to support the diagnosis and management of diseases in wildlife, such as carcinoma in lions.