Animal health commands as little as 0.6 percent of global health spending, according to a new report from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), which warns that the shortfall coincides with a rising wave of animal disease emergencies worldwide.

The figure anchors a blunt message for veterinary professionals, livestock producers and public-health agencies alike: the money flowing into animal health systems has not kept pace with the threats those systems now face.

What does the 0.6 percent figure mean in practice?

Global health budgets cover human medicine, public-health infrastructure and animal health combined. Within that combined pool, WOAH finds animal health captures a share that can fall to 0.6 percent — a fraction that funds surveillance, laboratory capacity, vaccination programs and veterinary field services across entire regions.

For practitioners, the consequence lands at the clinic door and the farm gate. Under-resourced surveillance networks detect outbreaks later. Late detection means wider spread, costlier control measures and greater spillover risk to humans.

Why the warning comes now

The report arrives amid what WOAH describes as mounting disease crises. Emerging and re-emerging animal pathogens — including those with zoonotic potential — continue to test national veterinary services that lack the budgets to respond at scale.

The food-animal sector carries the heaviest exposure. Transboundary livestock diseases disrupt trade, cut producer income and strain national response capacity. Companion-animal medicine, largely market-funded, faces a different pressure: laboratory and surveillance infrastructure built for production animals also supports broader diagnostic capability that private practice depends on.

The public-health dimension is explicit. Most emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in animals, and WOAH has long framed animal health investment as a front-line defense for human health. A 0.6 percent allocation, the organization implies, buys very little of that defense.

What would change the number?

WOAH frames the report as a call to donors, governments and international finance institutions to rebalance health spending toward animal health systems. The organization argues that early investment in animal surveillance costs far less than the emergency responses that follow when diseases go undetected.

The report does not prescribe a single target share. It does establish a baseline — 0.6 percent — against which future funding commitments can now be measured.

Veterinary associations and livestock industries are likely to cite the figure in advocacy for greater public investment in veterinary services, diagnostic networks and vaccine capacity in the coming budget cycles.