One Health Congress 2020

I was fortunate enough to attend the recent World One Health Congress 2020. This was my first engagement with the One Health community that I became fascinated with during my PhD.

Unfortunately, as you might expect, the conference had to move to a virtual platform. It was a real shame not to be able to interact with the community face to face. Instead I tried to increase engagement by becoming more active on twitter – it was no replacement for in person meetings, but better than nothing.

For those who haven’t come across the One Health approach before, an early definition is:

“the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals and our environment”
One Health Initiative Task Force, 2008

However, the One Health approach has been evolving, and it now means different things to different people. The traditional One Health triad is human health, animal/plant health, and environmental health, but one of the messages from the conference was that there is an appetite for more communication, collaboration and general involvement from sectors outside of this triad.

I’ve heard/read that the One Health community is dominated by veterinarians and medics, and that medics are less engaged with One Health. That said, the social sciences have been brought into the forefront more recently but, relatively speaking, the community still appears to be a sea of veterinarians. As an ecologist I’m keen to see a more prominent role from people with my background; after all, both tackling zoonotic diseases and related conflicts with domestic animals and wildlife go hand in hand with the study of ecology. However, I recognise that, due to my relatively recent interest in the subject, I may be naïve to any prominent role in the community by ecologists.

With this in mind, I was interested to know more about the more general engagement of the different sectors of the One Health triad. To get a better insight into this, during the conference, I started a twitter poll asking participants of the conference which sector they best represented. I appreciate that it can be hard to choose just one sector, and many researchers will feel their work interfaces multiple  sectors. For instance, I could argue that my research sits in the environmental health sector but, if I had to choose one, I would put myself in the animal/plant health sector, as my research to date (particularly that on dogs and Guinea worm) has been concerned with risk factors for animal infections and informing interventions to reduce disease in animals.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a large response. With a small sample size (~1% of participants) we can’t infer much, but the poll seems to reflect what I’ve heard/read and, most strikingly, there is little representation of the environmental health sector, which has been noted recently (see here). So it would seem the community still has room for growth before it is representative of the concept it desires to be.

The above is a distraction from what was a very good conference. I am supportive of the One Health approach and I hope I can integrate better into the growing community. The conference was very encouraging for global disease management, and it was great to see the various collaborative efforts being made to better the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment.

Below are some of the highlights from the talks I ‘attended’ at the conference. This doesn’t include any of the great posters (>900) or the many talks on anti-microbial resistance (which was a major component of the conference that I hope to catch up on before the talks are taken down in December).

This slide from the talk by Casey Barton Behravesh nicely summarises why we need a One Health approach for zoonoses prioritisation

 

Mahesh Kumar – Veterinary vaccines and their impact on One Health. Veterinary vaccines can help reduce the use of antimicrobials and help the development of vaccines for humans

 

Ab Osterhaus’s talk ‘Pandemic Preparedness Planning in Peacetime: what is missing?’ We are not investing enough in pandemic preparedness during peacetime!

 

Insightful talk by Ab Osterhaus ‘COVID-19 vaccination update’ Getting vaccine development down from 10-15 yrs to <2 yrs without cutting corners is achievable. We need to also think about the logistics of global distribution and administration

 

Kevin Bardosh talking about ‘COVID-19, 5G, and the Anatomy of Belief: Understanding Infodemics in the Anthropocene’ We need more research, and we need an honest conversation that engages the public!

 

The talk ‘Communication in a pandemic’ by Debora MacKenzie. I think this slide says a lot, and largely explains why (the western world at least) was not prepared for the pandemic.

 

Talk by Janina Krambrich on the long distance dispersal of SARS-COV-2 in hospital wards. Very relevant to my current work on nosocomial transmission and the risk of infection for healthcare workers!

 

Jayati Atahar’s talk ‘Assessment of Effectiveness of National Lockdown Measures in Reducing COVID19 Burden – A Comparison of Selected Countries’. Early action is key!

 

Linfa Wang’s talk on Bats as an example of a major reservoir, was very interesting. Bats are great are striking a balance between their defence and tolerance to better co-exist with diseases, we have a lot to learn from them!

 

Ellie Graeden presents some really cool resources in her talk ‘Outbreak Activity Library: A user-friendly compilation of all activities essential for effective outbreak response’

 

Talk by Flavie Vial. The future has lots of unknowns! We need to keep the data flowing and we need collaborations to go beyond the traditional triad of One Health

 

Robbie McDonald presents our work on Domestic dogs and the eradication of Guinea worm.

 

Andrew Gibson explains how Mission Rabies is helping to conquer rabies in India. Using One Health principles and getting to the root of the problem – dogs. Fantastic results coordinating vaccination teams using some cool mobile tech.

 

Talk by Maganga Sambo on Large-scale dog vaccination campaigns in Tanzania. One of many challenges was the owners lack of dog handling skills – a case for integrating education on dog husbandry into campaigns?

 

Ahmed Lugelo’s talk on advances towards a thermostable rabies vaccine is very exciting!

 

Stella Mazeri’s talk on oral baits and how they can help access more free-ranging dogs for rabies vaccination compared to net catching methods.

 

A talk by Monica Lakhanpaul on ‘…a One Health conceptual diagram of under-5 (U5) infections in urban slums…’ A great example of engaging the communities to map disease risks. acesoghc.com/chip

 

Sandra Steele’s talk ‘..knowledge, attitudes and practices of Australian general practitioners and veterinarians…’ highlights the need for more cross-sectoral engagement to bring the two communities together to establish One Health pathways to disease preparedness

 

Zoe Grange presents ‘SpillOver’ a cool opensource tool for ranking the risk potential for different viruses spilling over from wildlife to humans. A scientific watchlist for viruses to inform interventions. COVID-19 ranked 3rd! Watch this space!

 

The conference featured some great science talks from VAXVOX

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