Global leaders, experts see potential in shared risks
Global health leaders are trying to help countries find flaws in how they find and respond to disease threats.
Other health experts are encouraging education and collaboration on disease risks that affect humans, animals, and the ecosystem.
Dr. Julie R. Sinclair is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's one-health liaison to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). During a lecture at AVMA Convention 2019 this August in Washington, D.C., she described a series of international agreements and projects that are helping national leaders protect their people, animals, and wildlife.
The OIE, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and World Health Organization coordinate efforts and share responsibilities for health threats that cross among humans, animals, and environments.
In 2010, that tripartite alliance led its member states in an agreement to combine efforts on zoonotic influenza, rabies, and antimicrobial resistance. In 2017 and 2018, the organizations agreed to address other diseases, such as zoonotic tuberculosis and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, as well as improve disease detection and prevention.
Among recent work, the three groups published in March instructions for how countries can take a one-health approach to address zoonotic disease within their borders and see potential threats.
"This is guidance to countries on how the different sectors—animal, human, and environment—can all work together on these topics," Dr. Sinclair said.
It also can help local leaders engage people who work outside the health professions, such as lawmakers, law enforcement officers, and finance leaders. The instructions also can help health officials make the most of limited resources.
"I think the best part of the guidance is that there's stories or experiences in there from different countries as to how they use the one-health approach," she said.
Dr. Sinclair also described the OIE's work to build countries' veterinary capacities, which includes having the people and abilities to respond to disease threats, discover new ones, and monitor the health of their animals. The OIE also sets standards for laboratories, drugs, vaccines, and education.
As of the OIE's General Session in May, organization officials had helped 141 counties evaluate their national veterinary services within the previous 10 years through the Performance of Veterinary Services Pathway.
Tripartite officials also are helping national leaders find out how well they're complying with international health regulations, combat hemorrhagic diseases such as Ebola, and improve regional disease surveillance systems and diagnostic laboratories worldwide.
During the convention's annual Global Health Summit, a series of lecturers also described the roles of wildlife-human encounters, shared parasites, and environmental contamination. One of those lecturers, Lynn Miller, PhD, general manager for New Zealand Bird Rescue Charitable Trust in Auckland, described how work by wildlife rehabilitators can affect the health of humans and domesticated animals. Rehabilitators can see risks of pathogens such as rabies and West Nile virus, the rise of resistance to antimicrobial or antiparasitic drugs, and the presence of environmental contamination.
"In New Zealand, keas—mountain parrots—are literally losing ground because of lead toxicosis, rodenticides, and insecticides," she said.
Dr. Miller said animal rehabilitation organizations provide incredible opportunities for both disease monitoring and physiology and anatomy research. She also showed how the rise of a parasite in wildlife can cause indirect harms for people.
In Cape Cod, mange has killed young foxes and reduced their population, allowing rodent populations to increase and, thus, increase the Lyme disease risk for humans. When people respond with rodenticides, they also can kill birds of prey.
Other lecturers in the series described public health projects that identified community and ecosystem sources of problems, work that created curricula and resulted in greater one-health training, the need to develop reliable alternatives to antimicrobials, the potential that data on animal and human health interactions could be used to predict disease outbreaks and provide alerts when the risk is high, and the ways improving animal health could reduce resource use and improve sustainability.
Related JAVMA content:
OIE to aid against disease, uncertainty (Aug. 1, 2019)
WHO, UN report says drug resistance is a crisis (July 15, 2019)