CONCEPT OF ONE HEALTH NEEDS A FIRM TASK FORCE
Ambika Sharma1, Ashish Kumar2 & Sanjay Kumar Mishra3
1College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, U.P. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Pashu-Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalaya Evam Go Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura-281 001, Uttar Pradesh, India.
2All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Rishikesh-249 203, Uttarakhand, India
3Veterinary Medical Officer, Department of Animal Husbandry, Government of Uttar Pradesh
During the last few decades, the concept of one health has gained immense importance as it recognized that health of human beings is closely associated with health of animals and surroundings. The emergence of deadly COVID-19 virus not only threatened lives but also diverted attention of scientists, educationists, epidemiologists from all over the globe to make collaborative efforts of one health for diagnosis and control of zoonotic diseases.
Until now, Asean and Trans Pacific countries are giving more emphasis to this need of the hour-One health approach. Also, Biotechnology & Biosciences Research Foundation, UK, Gates Foundation etc. are giving fund support to one health approach.
Figure 1; ONE Health Triad
ONE Health is an integrated, unified approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely linked to the health of animals and our shared environment. This is not a new concept; however, it has become more relevant in recent years, particularly during the recent pandemic of COVID-19. One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and multidisciplinary approach with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes. The ONE Health approach will help in protecting the health of all living beings by bringing specialists across fields together to solve problems threatening humans, animals, and the environment. Working together, new and better ideas can be developed and implemented. It has its origin way back in the 1980’s, when epidemiologist Calvin Schwabe called for a unified human and veterinary approach to combat zoonotic diseases, providing the modern foundation for One Health.
When the people, animals, and their environment are put together they make up the One Health Triad. The ONE Health Triad shows how the health of people, animals, and the environment are linked to one another. Under ONE health umbrella, different scientific fields are incorporated under one namely human medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, and environmental biology.
One Health measures includes primary prevention, earlier predication and detection, timely and effective containment and response to global health threats at the human-animal-environment interface.
Various centres has been established as one health centre to combat emerging zoonotic diseases. WHO formed a One Health Initiative to integrate work on human, animal and environmental health across the Organization by including Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) as a One Health Quadripartite. The aim of the One Health Quadripartite is to reduce health threats at the human-animal-ecosystem interface. It is required to thwart the present as well as future global health threats in diseases, like H1N1 avian influenza, NIPAH, MERS, SARSZIKA, Ebola and Covid-19 like situations.
Health risks are increasing day by day due to deforestation, global warming, drug resistance leading to evolvement of a new strains of pathogens. As far as zoonotic diseases are concerned focus should be given not only on the transmission of pathogens from animals to humans but also on the transmission of pathogens from humans to animals as animal health is also greatly impacted by diseases transmitted from humans. After all, it’s everyone’s health.
The health of animals and of the environment greatly impacted by human activities. According to the World Organisation for Animal Health1 (WOAH, founded as Office International des Epizooties (OIE), Paris, 60% of pathogens that cause human diseases originate from domestic animals or wildlife, 75% of emerging human pathogens are of animal origin, 80% of pathogens that are of bioterrorism concern originate in animals. As far as food security are concerned, here also we need to work on the principles of ONE health as because, it is estimated that the more than 70% additional animal protein will be needed to feed the world by 20502, in the meantime, more than 20% of global animal production losses takes place due to animal diseases. On the environmental front, as we deplete the forest cover, we face wildlife encounter that increases the likelihood of disease transmission.
Climate change due to the fast depletion of renewable sources of energy and environmental degradation is leading to the cause of several zoonotic diseases as it is the major cause of increased stress levels in animals.
The thought of one treatment can be further cemented based on the ancient, the primitive system of treatment, which we have now named as Ethnomedicine. In certain acute and emergency cases, a modern intervention plus a follow up with Ayurveda or homeopathy or acupuncture can erase the condition completely. It is more like giving a wide angle to our belief of healthcare and wellness. A holistic approach towards animal health care by joining hands with human health care, concluding that there is only one form of life, one pattern of health status and one line of treatment3. In addition to this, cow urine would be a promising source of highly potent antimicrobial peptides and an effective alternative to the resistant antibiotics4.
In India, recognizing the devastating impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on animals, human, health systems, and economies, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, started a mega consortium on ‘One Health’ for carrying out surveillance of important bacterial, viral and parasitic infections of zoonotic as well as transboundary pathogens in India5. This consortium is led by DBT-National Institute of Animal Biotechnology, Hyderabad and consists of 27 organisations, that includes AIIMS, Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur, IVRI, Bareilly, GADVASU, Ludhiana, TANUVAS, Chennai, MAFSU, Nagpur, Assam agricultural university, ICAR, ICMR centres and wild life agencies and is one of the biggest one health programs launched by Government of India in post-COVID times.
The department of animal husbandry & dairying (DAHD)6, Government of India has launched a pilot project in the state of Uttarakhand and Karnataka to implement the One Health Framework by One Health Support Unit. There is a project steering committee (PSC) chaired by the Secretary, DAHD, comprising of authorities from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, ICAR, civil societies, international development organisations, and field practitioners. Different operational parameters were identified for the selection of these two states for the pilot project. In this context, two collaborative research projects, funded by the ICAR and ICMR were initiated to conduct the epidemiological surveillance of selected zoonotic diseases in Central India. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) decided to establish a National Institute of One Health at Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. The OH approach is gaining attention day by day as a standard approach globally to combat the different emerging and zoonotic diseases that possess a public health challenges.
References
- One Health. WOAH – World Organisation for Animal Health. https://www.woah.org/en/what-we-do/global-initiatives/one-health/
- FAO, 2011. World Livestock 2011 –Livestock in the food security
- Nair, Dr. Sreeja S., One Life – One Health – One Treatment (August 26, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3442786
- Sharma Ambika, Nigam Rajesh, Kumar Ashish and Singh Simmi, Mass Spectrometry-Based Identification of Urinary Antimicrobial Peptides in Dairy Cows, Protein & Peptide Letters 2020; 27(3). https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/0929866526666191025105038
- Country’s first ‘One Health’ consortium.
- Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying launches ‘One Health’ pilot project in Uttarakhand. https://pib.gov.in/pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1814260
- डॉ संजय कुमार मिश्र, डॉ रुचि सिंह गौर I 2021, एक स्वास्थ्य पहल / वन हेल्थ के अंतर्गत पशुजन्य रोगों के नियंत्रण मैं पशु चिकित्सा विदो की भूमिका I https://www.pashudhanpraharee.com/role-of-one-health-and-veterinarians-in-control-of-zoonoses/
