One Health can provide a safe, 'no judgment zone' for many needed conversations surrounding our most difficult global and environmental health challenges.
This is a webpage where many items can be shared, from peer reviewed scientific case studies to examples of One Health successes (or missed opportunities) to Op Eds and Opinion Pieces.
Opinions expressed here are not necessarily approved by the One Health Commission but are shared ‘because’ this is a safe, no judgement zone and we need to hear from many perspectives on many of today’s challenges. Thoughtful articles written in a professional tone will be considered for posting. Submit suggested items to ohc@onehealthcommission.org.
See digital One Health stories in a Virtual One Health Exhibition shared by researchers from the Center for International Health CIHLMU and the European University Alliance for Global Health.
To see peer reviewed scientific articles visit the Commission's online One Health Library Journal Articles/White Papers Section.
Author: Hope Ferdowsian In: Health and Human Rights Journal, Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 1-5
"One Health, in its most common applications, has come under scrutiny for being too anthropocentric and for failing to include adequate attention to human and nonhuman rights and well-being.[10] These critiques also raise questions about whether other human-centered frameworks, such as international treaties that remain focused solely on human rights rather than on human and nonhuman rights, are sufficient to tackle interconnected problems that pose an existential threat to human and nonhuman existence."
As a One Health issue impacting life across humans, animals, and the environment, antibiotic resistance is found in one of the most basic resources for life – water. Antibiotic-resistant pathogens and their genes have been found in streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. They can often be traced back to discharge flowing from hospitals, farms, or sewage systems. Even properly functioning wastewater treatment systems may not fully remove resistant pathogens and their genes.
We have ignored, exploited and violated many of these relationships for millennia and now face the nemesis of Nature’s retribution. The worse is yet to come if we do not, as the Hopi Prophecy warns, collectively and singularly repair these relationships and respect all our relations, plant and animal, water, soil and stone. In this anthropocene age we are experiencing the existential crisis, environmentally, socio-economically and in terms of public health and food security that the Hopi Indians prophetically warned about as a consequence of koyaanisquatsi, life out of balance. Renunciation of our self-worship of gods created in our own image would be a good beginning toward living in harmony with all life, the spiritual root of One Health and the antidote to our pathogenic anthropocentrism. Indeed, Global Sustainability via a One Health approach as a moral compass is critical to our planet’s survival and thereby ourselves.
Alejandro Gaviria, School of Economics, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá 111711, Colombia.
One Health Implement Res 2021;1:14-6. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ohir.2020.001
“We need a comprehensive approach and a good normative foundation to trigger social change. Nevertheless, these are not sufficient. One Health is difficult. We also need brave leadership, and persistence. My experience shows that there are many forces that inhibit social change. We lose some battles, while we win others. Yet we have to maintain a bias for hope.”
Dr. Lucero, the small animal veterinarian with Bartonella and Babesia infections, said: “Preventing these infections is a better option than trying to treat them. A one-health approach to this is focusing on flea and tick prevention for animals and seeking care from knowledgeable providers when exposure does happen. Bartonella and Babesia can be a much bigger problem in healthier individuals than originally thought, and further research and investigation is needed. Like SARS-CoV-2, we are still in the process of figuring everything out.”
Narrative Commentary by Dr. Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf
In general, pigs, chickens, cats, and dogs show mild respiratory or enteric signs once coronavirus is endemic. Naive populations experience higher morbidities and mortalities, and there are always those pesky mutations and recombination events that can increase virulence with undesirable outcomes. I am over-simplifying, but this is not a scientific treatise. What is exciting for me as a veterinarian is to learn that feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a disease caused by a coronavirus that was 100% fatal in cats when I graduated from veterinary school, can now be treated successfully with combined anti-viral therapies similar and sometime identical to the drugs used to treat COVID patients. As with HIV, SARS-CoV-2 will probably be easier to treat than prevent.
" In practice, the One Health approach has primarily resulted in specific attention to infectious diseases that can be transmitted across species (i.e., zoonoses). This approach often fails to address the central connections between the rights, health, and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. ...... The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how One Health approaches have failed by focusing on harm reduction instead of on more universal forms of primary prevention that address the roots of illness and disease. ........ The rights, health, and wellbeing of animals and the health of ecosystems are largely ignored by these institutions, unless the animals living in those ecosystems are considered potential vectors for human disease. Institutions focused on the health and wellbeing of non-captive animals and ecosystems have also been largely left out of One Health policy discussions.
Human rights, including the right to health and to a healthy living environment, are also generally omitted from the current One Health approach. Although social, environmental, and political factors that affect health are now widely recognized throughout the fields of medicine and public health, One Health fails to sufficiently consider these factors."
"With the creation of this pop-up, open-door, One Health clinic in their neighborhood, we offer a unique opportunity to use the human-animal bond for the benefit of the community as a whole. This open platform encourages further development of the emotional and physical wellbeing of both pet and owner by creating a welcoming environment free of judgement or financial barriers. We aspire to give our clients the power to take an active role in their pet’s healthcare with the hope that this translates to empowerment in their own healthcare decisions…. This inclusive healthcare model shows promise to provide access to services in both rural and urban areas for people and pets and could become an impactful way to reach populations that have been previously underserved."
Prof. Cate Dewey of the University of Guelph, Canada, assembled a team to manage Taenia solium, a parasite transmitted through pigs that was causing epilepsy in people, engaging the community to help find answers. Kenyan PhD student (now Dr. Florence Mutua, University of Nairobi) met with community members – the women who raise the pigs, the elders, and the local veterinarians – to understand what the community considered to be its needs for pig health management education and research. This story is a strong example of how and why the social sciences are so incredibly important in the One Health approach to very difficult problems.
