2022 was a busy and productive year for WHO’s One Health Initiative. Key to its efforts was the launch of the One Health Joint Plan of Action with the other Quadripartite members, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).
The plan integrates systems and capacity to collectively better prevent, predict, detect, and respond to health threats. Ultimately, this coordination should improve the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment, while contributing to sustainable development.
The plan was launched on 18 October 2022, during a joint event at the World Health Summit in Berlin, hosted by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesell-schaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Museum für Naturkunde and the Foundation Healthy Planet-Healthy People.
It was then presented at the biennial World One Health Congress, held in Singapore in November. The focus of that conference was on how One Health could support the Covid-19 recovery by integrating science, policy, and clinical practice. The pandemic has spurred many governments to look for guidance, and the One Health Joint Plan of Action is providing them with a framework in which to move forward.
Breaking the silos that exist between sectors and disciplines will require innovative approaches and strengthening of social, administrative, scientific, economic and political will. Greater investment in applied and multidisciplinary implementation research, including in social behaviour change across the spectrum from building new knowledge to piloting and scaling is needed to enable sustainable, locally relevant scientific and evidence-based interventions that channel scientific inquiry toward positive change.
The Quadripartite is currently developing an implementation framework to operationalize the One Health Joint Plan of Action at all levels and to support countries to establish or further strengthen their One Health systems and capacities.
One Health is an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems. It uses the close, interdependent links among these fields to create new surveillance and disease control methods.
For example, the way land is used can impact the number of malaria cases. Weather patterns and human-built water controls can affect diseases like dengue. Trade in live, wild animals can increase the likelihood of infectious diseases jumping over to people – called disease spillover.
The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance and a more holistic, integrated system. Gaps in One Health knowledge, prevention and integrated approaches were seen as key drivers of the pandemic. By addressing the linkages between human, animal and environmental health, One Health is seen as a transformative approach to improved global health.
Key facts
- The health of humans, animals, and ecosystems are closely interlinked. Changes in these relationships can increase the risk of new human and animal diseases developing and spreading.
- The close links between human, animal and environmental health demand close collaboration, communication and coordination between the relevant sectors.
- One Health is an approach to optimize the health of humans, animals and ecosystems by integrating these fields, rather than keeping them separate.
- Some 60% of emerging infectious diseases that are reported globally come from animals, both wild and domestic. Over 30 new human pathogens have been detected in the last 3 decades, 75% of which have originated in animals.
- Human activities and stressed eco- systems have created new opportunities for diseases to emerge and spread.
- These stressors include animal trade, agriculture, livestock farming, urbanization, extractive industries, climate change, habitat fragmentation and encroachment into wild areas.
To implement One Health, major structural changes are required to integrate the human, animal and environmental health fields and support multi-sectoral communication, collaboration, coordination, and capacity strengthening.
We now have an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen collaboration and policies across these many areas and reduce the risk of future pandemics and epidemics while also addressing the ongoing burden of endemic and non-communicable diseases.
Surveillance that monitors risks and helps identify patterns across these many areas is needed. In addition, new research should integrate the impact of these different fields, particularly on the drivers that lead to crises.
WHO is integrating One Health across its units and offices, providing strategic advice relating to policy, and conducting training at the local, national and regional levels. The goal is stronger programmes that are led and owned by countries.
One Health Joint Plan of Action https://bit.ly/3Z38fhw
