What is One Health?
There is no one single definition for “One Health” used by everyone worldwide. In general, the term refers to taking a multisectoral, multi-disciplinary approach and ensuring communication, collaboration, and coordination among all relevant ministries, agencies, stakeholders, sectors, and disciplines, for optimal action.
In the context of the IHR Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, taking a One Health approach means including, from all relevant sectors, the national information, expertise, perspectives, and experience necessary to conduct the assessments, evaluations, reporting and preparedness activities.
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One Health Operations - Section 1
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The WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) and OIE Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) assess and support the human and animal health systems, respectively, but coordination across the two sectors remains challenging in many country settings.
The IHR-PVS National Bridging Workshops bring together actors from both sectors and present a structured, guided methodology, allowing participants to collectively identify barriers to synergy and existing gaps in collaboration. Corrective measures are identified to form a road-map to improve the collaboration between the two sectors in the prevention, detection and response to zoonotic disease outbreaks and other health issues at the interface between humans and animals. For more information, please visit the IHR-PVS National Bridging Workshop page.
The WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) and OIE Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) assess and support the human and animal health systems, respectively, but coordination across the two sectors remains challenging in many country settings.
The IHR-PVS National Bridging Workshops bring together actors from both sectors and present a structured, guided methodology, allowing participants to collectively identify barriers to synergy and existing gaps in collaboration. Corrective measures are identified to form a road-map to improve the collaboration between the two sectors in the prevention, detection and response to zoonotic disease outbreaks and other health issues at the interface between humans and animals. For more information, please visit the IHR-PVS National Bridging Workshop page.
A Tripartite Guide to Addressing Zoonotic Diseases in Countries
Every day we hear about health challenges at the human-animal-environment interface. Zoonotic diseases such as avian influenza, rabies, Ebola, and Rift Valley fever continue to have major impacts on health, livelihoods, and economies. These health threats cannot be effectively addressed by one sector alone. Multidisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration is needed to tackle them and to reduce their impacts.
As a way to support countries in taking a One Health approach to address zoonotic diseases, the guide: “Taking a Multisectoral, One Health Approach: A Tripartite Guide to Addressing Zoonotic Diseases in Countries” has been jointly developed by the Tripartite organizations (FAO, OIE, and WHO). This Guide, referred to as the Tripartite Zoonotic Guide (TZG) is flexible enough to be used for other health threats at the human-animal-environment interface; for example, food safety and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The TZG provides principles, best practices and options to assist countries in achieving sustainable and functional collaboration at the human-animal-environment interface. Examples and lessons learned from countries experiences are also included.
By using the TZG and its associated operational tools (which are currently being developed), countries can build or strengthen their national capacities in:
An interim version of the first Tripartite Operational Tool, for conducting national joint qualitative risk assessments, is currently available to countries wishing to conduct pilots. This Operational Tool is for use by the relevant sectors in countries wishing to conduct a qualitative joint risk assessment for a national priority zoonoses, ongoing zoonotic disease event, or other health threat at the human-animal-environment interface. The final Operational Tool will be available in all six UN languages in 2020. The summary is available here.
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