Date: 7 February 2023

The African Academy of Sciences and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences jointly organised a two-day workshop on 6-7 February 2023 to discuss the implementation of One Health approaches in Africa. The One Health workshop was followed by a researcher capacity building workshop on 7 February 2023.

The One Health High-Level Expert Panel defines ‘One Health’ as an integrative and systemic approach to health, grounded on the understanding that human health is closely linked to the healthiness of food, animals, and the environment and the healthy balance of their impact on the ecosystems they share, everywhere in the world. 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), while health, food, water, energy and the environment are wider topics with sector-specific concerns, a collaborative approach across the sectors contributes to protect health, address challenges relating to food safety, combatting antibiotic resistance; the control of zoonoses; and help preserve the integrity of ecosystems. 

Over the past three decades, the onset of outbreaks of zoonotic diseases has increased. As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, public health systems need to be able to rapidly identify threats and react promptly. From the COVID-19 experience, it is crucial to identify what could be done better, to prevent future outbreaks or mitigate their impacts. 

A multi-sectoral One Health approach is critical for the control of diseases such as avian flu and tuberculosis and for the prevention of new emerging pathogens, especially zoonoses, which are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans. While emerging zoonoses often capture the world’s attention, given their potential threat to high-income countries, many low-and-middle income countries carry the burden of zoonoses, especially endemic diseases such as rabies and leptospirosis. 

The International Health Initiatives set up to address zoonoses predominately focus on those that pose a threat to the broader global community, rather than endemic zoonoses. Even within low resource settings, those predominately exposed to zoonotic infections are vulnerable communities, such as the one billion poor livestock keepers in Asia and Africa.

The One Health approach can play a pivotal part in improving health and more broadly facilitate positive developments to wellbeing, livelihoods, and the environment, by aligning separate efforts to work collaboratively. This involves bringing together key players across the sectors such as medical doctors, veterinarians, agricultural experts, social scientists and public health experts. Bringing together expertise across the ecosystem, could also support with identifying and bridging key research gaps. 

The main objectives of this workshop were to:

• Bring together multi-sectoral expertise across the One Health spectrum in the continent.
• Comprehensively review previous and ongoing One Health initiatives and research innovations across the sectors, with a particular focus on operationalisation, to understand where the gaps are and how a multi-sectoral approach could support in addressing these gaps.
• Identify solutions and key actions that can facilitate greater multi-sectoral collaboration within countries, across regions and the continent that stakeholders can take forward.
   

To achieve this, the workshop aimed to: 

• Learn from existing initiatives, evidence, and successes from across the continent and the UK on the implementation of One Health approaches to allow countries to learn from one another.
• Identify country/region/continent specific challenges, barriers and gaps to enhancing One Health capabilities across research areas, that could be addressed through multi-sectoral collaboration.
• Consider how initiatives and research can prioritise community engagement through greater multi-sectoral collaboration.
• Identify key actions and research areas for multi-sectoral collaboration that can enhance One Health capabilities.

Original article published by The Academy of Medical Sciences, linked here.