Objectives of the One Health Platform (One Health)

2023-08-17 08:57:47

The president of the One Health Platform, Maite Martín Ibáñez, analyzes in this article the importance, effects, and benefits of the “One Health” comprehensive approach for people, animals, and the environment, as well as its transformative power.

Maite Martín has a degree and a PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and a professor in the Department of Cellular Biology, Physiology and Immunology of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at this university center.

She was president of the Conference of Deans of Veterinary Faculties in Spain between 2020 and 2022 and has chaired the One Health Platform (Una Sola Salud) since its creation in 2021.

The One Health approach and cascading effects

Maite Martín Ibáñez, president of the One Health Platform (One Health)

It took a pandemic like the one caused by COVID-19, with devastating consequences at all levels, for the One Health approach to begin to transcend beyond the scientific field.

And this despite the fact that international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, among others, have spent more than a decade promoting actions aimed at different countries move towards a model that addresses health considering the three pillars that support it: the health of people, the health of animals and the health of the environment (including ecosystems and plant species).

The essence of the One Health approach

This is, in short, the essence of the One Health approach, analyzing health challenges considering all the factors that are involved, including economic, social and cultural aspects, in order to find the most efficient solution possible to increase the degree of protection of the health of the population.

The relevance of making progress in the effective implementation of this comprehensive approach to health lies in the magnitude and nature of the threats we currently face.

Phenomena such as climate change, the appearance of emerging diseases that can give rise to pandemics, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystems or the change that is taking place in the geographical distribution of disease-transmitting vectors as a consequence of global warming and that makes it easier for diseases to appear in areas where they did not previously exist.

To give a few examples, they are elements that are closely linked and have a common origin: the ecological imbalance that is taking place due to the intense activity that people have been carrying out on our planet.

It is this imbalance that is intensifying the interdependence between all the elements that are part of the complex network of interactions that make up life on our planet, facilitating cascading effects that increase, even more if possible, the pressure exerted by our environment. about our state of health and well-being.

The president of the One Health Platform (One Health), Maite Martín/Courtesy photo

The impact of climate change on health

By way of example, climate change not only directly impacts people’s health in multiple ways (increased mortality due to increasingly intense and frequent heat waves, increase in cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, sleep disturbances) , but it also does so indirectly by increasing episodes of drought, which, among other things, forces families, especially those with fewer economic resources, to consume less healthy food due to the rise in prices of vegetables as a consequence of crop loss.

And obviously, drought deteriorates ecosystems and contributes to the extinction of species, an extinction that weakens the protective shield provided by biodiversity against the appearance of emerging diseases in people.

In this new reality, the health management that we have been applying, based mainly on the treatment of human diseases after their appearance, is not only clearly insufficient to face the important health challenges that we face, but it is the that is calling into question the sustainability of health benefits and is favoring inequalities in health.

Transformative power of the One Health approach and Public Health

The transforming power of the One Health approach lies in the fact that it is oriented towards maintaining health, understanding that prevention must be a fundamental pillar in health management in today’s world, thus valuing an invisible field of action. in the eyes of the majority of society: Public Health.

In essence, the approach One Health It is the tool that should allow us to build a modern Public Health, which goes beyond what up to now we have understood as preventive measures aimed at protecting people’s health (vaccination plans, screening for the early detection of diseases, surveillance epidemiological based on the appearance of the disease in people among others).

Within this framework of modern Public Health, actions related to mobility, aimed at improving air quality, should be considered public health measures.

As well as public health measures, all those that are aimed at a more sustainable management of water resources or those that contribute to the fight against climate change, to give a few examples, should be considered.

A modern Public Health in which the participation of all sectors and agents involved, including citizens, is essential so that through the implementation of measures that contribute positively to conserving and protecting ecosystems, the health of animals and the health of the environment , healthier and more sustainable environments are created, a fact that will have a positive impact on people’s health.

We have very advanced human medicine. It is time for public health to advance as well. Our health depends on both.