One World, One Health: Prevent Zoonosis!
Marita Dias, Reshma M.M
Introduction
The majority of newly emerging infectious diseases are caused by zoonotic diseases, which are infections that spread from animals to humans. Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and India have the highest prevalence of zoonotic diseases, which cause extensive illness and fatalities. Nearly more than 60 percent of pathogens that infect people also transmit zoonotic illnesses to humans. A research by the International Livestock Research India found that 13 zoonoses account for 2.2 million annual fatalities and 2.4 billion cases of human sickness. As a result of increased human population and migration into new territories, more people live in close contact with wild and domestic animals, including livestock and pets. Close interaction with animals and their immediate surroundings gives greater potential for diseases to spread between animals and people.
Over 1 billion individuals in underprivileged and marginalised areas have been severely impacted by neglected tropical diseases globally. By managing the animal source of the infectious agents, the majority of zoonotic diseases in humans, including rabies, anthrax, and brucellosis, can be successfully avoided. Environmental pollution, ecosystem destruction, antimicrobial resistance and consumption of contaminated food are a few pertinent issues that cannot be controlled and solved by one sector alone. Therefore, a well-coordinated One Health strategy in the human, animal, and environmental sectors is thus necessary to address these concerns in an efficient manner.
One Health is a model for collaborative problem-solving that unites co-equal and inclusive efforts in the fields of environmental, animal, plant, and human health. It is an interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral, and collaborative strategy with the goal of guaranteeing optimal health via the understanding of linkages between environment, people, animals, and plants. It may be used at global, regional, national, and local levels. This comprehensive strategy can reduce and avoid health risks at the intersection of the environment, people, animals, and plants with the goal of attaining and sustainably optimising human and animal health, food and nutritional security, sustainable ecosystems, and fair trade.
Problems of one health include zoonotic diseases that affect humans, animals, and the environment, neglected tropical diseases, vector-borne illnesses, antimicrobial resistance, food safety and security, environmental contamination, climate change, and other health threats. This aims to meet the demand for safe and wholesome food, clean energy and water, combating climate change, and promoting sustainable development. Acting quickly to efficiently control the burden of zoonoses through One Health is critical. By promoting strong collaboration among relevant sectors, one health improves the network for early response and zoonoses detection, the diagnostic laboratory systems, the disease monitoring system, and the method for data exchange with all stakeholders.
Currently, a number of international one-health initiatives are being used and developed to support nations by facilitating and enhancing the one-health approach’s capacity, as well as designing strategies, implementation programmes, policies, legislation, and studies to improve global health security, comply with international health regulations, and handle common health threats. As an illustration, the WHO, FAO, WOAH, and UNEP have worked together to use the One Health concept to forecast, identify, respond to, and prevent risks to global health as well as to support sustainable development.
To conclude, “One Health Approach” remains little known outside of special sectors and institutions concerned with infectious diseases and especially zoonoses. The reduction of zoonotic risks in farms should be a priority in order to improve the overall health of humans and animals. To achieve this purpose, close cooperation and interaction between veterinarians, occupational health physicians, and public health operators is necessary. However, surveillance of animal health should be strictly ensured to track the globally emerging new outbreaks. The OH approach and zoonotic illnesses should be made more clear to farmers, livestock management, and conservationists.
References
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Erkyihun, G.A. and Alemayehu, M.B., 2022. One Health approach for the control of zoonotic diseases. Zoonoses.
Gashaw Adane Erkyihun and Meseret Bekele Alemayehu. One Health Approach for the Control of Zoonotic Diseases. Zoonoses. 2022. Vol. 2(1). DOI: 10.15212/ZOONOSES-2022-0037
Shaheen, M.N., 2022. The concept of one health applied to the problem of zoonotic diseases. Reviews in Medical Virology, 32(4), p.e2326.
Sinclair, J.R., 2019. Importance of a One Health approach in advancing global health security and the Sustainable Development Goals. Revue scientifique et technique (International Office of Epizootics), 38(1), pp.145-154.
https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/index.html
