Current initiatives in One Health: consolidating the One Health Global Network

Abstract

The Global Response to Avian Influenza has led to a longer-term One Health movement, which addresses risks, including zoonoses, at the human-animalenvironment interface, and requires the development of innovative partnerships at the political, institutional and technical levels. One Health is a sustainable and rational option when the cumulative effects of health hazards on food and economic security are considered, but demands long-term financial investment. Projections of growth in the demand for livestock production and consumption in Asia and Africa also call for effective One Health responses. However, an effective response also requires validated evidence of the socioeconomic value that the One Health approach can provide. Implementing the One Health approach depends on forging strong links between human and animal health services, the environment and public policy. The authors present a list of some of the national and transnational partnerships established since 2006. Political support, good governance and effective policies and networks are crucial building blocks for One Health sustainability. The Global Response to Avian Influenza was initially established under the joint leadership of the European Union, the United States and the United Nations System Influenza Coordination Office. Since then it has supported numerous initiatives, including the World Health Organization (WHO)/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)/World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Global Early Warning System (GLEWS). Indeed, the Global Response to Avian Influenza paved the way for an unprecedented WHO/FAO/OIE tripartite partnership, which promoted the integration of foodborne, neglected zoonotic and tropical diseases within the One Health movement and led to the tripartite High-Level Technical Meeting of 2011 in Mexico. The One Health Global Network, which began as a proposition at an Expert Consultation in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2009, is now a reality. While its Global Guidance Group takes shape, the choice of soft governance-an approach which relies more on information and advisory guidelines than on hierarchy and legislation, and which aims to steer local organisations rather than to control them-remains challenging. Nonetheless, the emergence of One Health as a professional and academic discipline, together with the growing references to a One Health culture, also offers new opportunities.

Governing Towards ‘One Health’: Establishing Knowledge Integration in Global Health Security Governance

“…An aspect of leadership, going forward, should be the commissioning of research by the WHO, in partnership with the UN, FAO, and OIE, to evidence ‘the socio‐economic value that the One Health approach can provide’ (Vandersmissen and Wellburn, , p. 421). This article has considerable sympathy with the reflections of Vandersmissen and Wellburn (, p. 426) (noted below) but it is for international governance organisations, such as the WHO, to provide the global policy culture, narratives and governance leadership that can facilitate less loosely‐bound and regionally dispersed epistemic networks:

Long‐term institutional approaches to zoonoses management that sustainably strengthen the regional and national institutional base for One Health require a rigorous assessment of governance structures, policy processes and stakeholder networks. This can only help decision‐makers to better understand, and become more informed about, ways to optimise existing structures to address health risks at the animal–human–environment interface.

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“…Although there is no specific reference to epistemic communities in their paper that addresses the global governance challenges of implementing a One Health model, Lee and Brumme (, p. 784) argue that advocates ‘must recognise that their vision is highly political and must strategise accordingly … One Health could transform GHG [Global Health Governance] … Strategically navigating the tricky political domain of GHG will be essential if the One Health approach is to be a catalyst for improving GHG, and simply not another casualty in a long list of initiatives’. In the context of global health network development, Vandersmissen and Wellburn () highlight specific multi‐level One Health initiatives at national, transnational and global levels. Table details the examples of One Health initiatives at a global level.…”

“…The fact that the WHO ‘works through multi‐stakeholder partnerships’ (Legge, , p.7) indicates that more needs to be done to work with multiple stakeholders to facilitate mechanisms for the uploading of bottom‐up preferences from communities in an effort to promote global democratisation processes. Indeed, there has been a step‐change over the past decade in the ‘political support for a trans‐disciplinary One Health approach to endemic zoonoses … with greater recognition that “packaged” interventions that simultaneously address a variety of endemic zoonotic infections that may reduce the risk of disease emergence and re‐emergence’ (Vandersmissen and Wellburn, , p. 426). In terms of working with multiple stakeholders, the WHO could shift its institutional identity and capacities to one that of ‘metagovernor’.…”

“…‘One Health’ is an important aspect of the Global Health Security Agenda launched in 2014 by the US government, international organisations, and partner agencies in order accelerate activities to address environmental and biological health threats on a global scale (on the basis that the animal‐human interface is a key source of these threats) (Gronvall et al., ). The One Health approach ‘depends on forging strong links between human and animal health services, the environment and public policy’ (Vandersmissen and Wellburn, , p. 421). As Gibbs (, p. 85) highlights in the Veterinary Record :

In the early years of the 21st century, emerging zoonotic viruses have had the potential to cause pandemic disease, including extensive human mortality … Governments and scientists worldwide recognised that greater interdisciplinary collaboration was required to prevent and control zoonoses, and that such collaboration should include not only physicians and veterinarians, but also wildlife specialists, environmentalists, anthropologists, economists and sociologists, among others.

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Vaccines the tugboat for prevention-based animal production

“…The World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) together promoted a comprehensive approach for better public health called "one health" (McConnell, 2014). The objective of "one health" is to promote multisectoral response to food safety hazards, the risk from zoonotic diseases and its control (disease that can spread between animals and humans, e.g., rabies, West Nile fever, salmonella, and flu) (Vandersmissen and Welburn, 2014;Buttigieg, 2015). One health activity also includes public health threats at the human-animalecosystem interface (antibiotic resistance) and provides guidance on how to reduce these risks (Vandersmissen and Welburn, 2014;Hoelzer et al, 2018).…”