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William B Karesh, Senior Vice President for Health and Policy at EcoHealth Alliance; Adjunct Professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine Icahn
The One Health concept is deceptively simple: it is recognized that human health, animal health, and environmental health are intrinsically linked.
In practice, this means addressing global health issues. such as epidemics and antibiotic resistance bringing together physicians, veterinarians, environmental scientists and civil society to tackle these issues more effectively on multiple fronts.
Simultaneous mitigation of health problems has the advantage of saving time, money and lives, rather than taking up a challenge in one area to see it emerge later in life. another.
Although this concept is particularly appreciated by veterinarians, the wider implementation of One Health practices has remained relatively weak. For example, our team has reviewed more than 1,800 scientific articles on One Health published since the introduction of this term in 2003. Only seven articles describe an effort to measure the benefits of this approach.
Research coordinated by the EcoHealth Alliance, a global environmental badociation. health organization, aims to show how we can better anticipate epidemics by joining forces. This can allow us to stay on the lookout for new threats to public health and take preventative measures to protect people and animals.
A look at Rift Valley Fever
We focused on Rift Valley fever, virus and zoonosis. disease, as a test to demonstrate the value of adopting a "one health" approach, with both scientific and rational use of resources.
Pbaded from mosquitoes to animals and animals to humans without known treatment, Rift Valley Fever is one of the eight priority diseases of the World Health Organization and all the elements that could quickly make it a Global Public Health Emergency
In humans, mild cases can cause flu-like symptoms that last four to seven days. Rift Valley fever can also cause a serious illness such as haemorrhagic fever with symptoms ranging from vomiting of blood, bleeding into the feces, bleeding from the nose or gums. Nearly half of people with this disease die.
Rift Valley fever causes serious disease in animals. About 90% of infected lambs die. The abortion rate in infected pregnant ewes is almost 100%.
Recent outbreaks in Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa have put health officials on high alert. Some authorities have restricted the movement of livestock and have even temporarily banned the sale of meat. And there is growing concern that the Rift Valley fever may be spreading in Europe.
Rift Valley fever is an ideal candidate for a One Health approach because of the complexity of its overlapping human, animal and environmental elements.
curing the virus, the better we can prevent epidemics, the sooner we can mobilize to prevent them from spreading and endangering animals and people.
Our research revealed that by tracing an illness through a combined One Health approach, we could get a larger and more accurate picture of how it was spreading. This would give us a greater opportunity to take preventative measures to protect people and animals, and save lives.
Modeling Disease Interactions
To show how this might work, we constructed a computer model of the complex interactions of diseases in humans, cattle, and mosquitoes based on real-world data. from our field project to demonstrate the possible results
We then performed simulations to compare two approaches: a One Health monitoring system with identical human-animal joint sampling.
Our simulations showed that the One Health sampling approach could detect animal-to-human disease transmission badociations that would have been omitted in typical integrated study design cases.
Our field research also revealed that a One Health approach was able to save up to 35% of staff and resource expenditures. We also found that the involvement of the private sector, such as ranchers, farmers and their badociations, often left out of the efforts of One Health, greatly improved efficiency and effectiveness. impact of work.
The participation of small farmers was particularly important. But in Kenya, where Rift Valley fever has been detected for the first time, and everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, convincing small farmers to keep their flocks vaccinated can be difficult if they do not see it. an imminent risk.
arrive once every five to six years. So many farmers do not see the return on the costs of animal vaccination each year, nor with each new season of lambing and calving, which can last up to three times per year.
Ultimately, the only way for us to reduce the risk To vaccinate livestock, the fever that is increasingly prevalent in a pandemic is to vaccinate livestock.
We can be better prepared to deal with diseases before they occur and to avoid devastating consequences, but only if environmental scientists, veterinarians and doctors work together and with the public. This is not an easy or inexpensive task, but our results indicate that there are multiple returns on investment for all of us who share the same health.
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