Re-imagining Public Health: Towards a One Health Approach

Some might wish to forget the year 2020 as soon as possible. However, if there is one thing we can learn from it, I believe it is that we, as a species, are fragile, and that our health and well-being are closely intertwined with the health and well-being of our living environment.

One health: the health of all living beings
on this planet is connected

Of course, this has been made clear by the pandemic that — at the time of writing — has taken over 1.8 million human lives. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, an infectious disease that spreads from animals to humans. Six out of ten known infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin [1] and of all emerging diseases even three out of four.[2] Major risk factors for emerging zoonoses are our destruction of the natural environment, which brings us into closer contact with animals with whom we have had little prior contact. And, our livestock industry, which raises billions of animals in often poor sanitary, unhealthy and tightly packed conditions. Our animal farms are breeding grounds for new diseases and scientists fear a new strain of avian flu might develop that has the potential to be many times more deadly than COVID-19.[3] The current pandemic has hardly come as a surprise to insiders.[4]

But it is not only pandemics that highlight the intimate connection between our own health, and the health of the animals we rear and our environment. Climate change is considered by medical scientists to be one of the biggest threats to our public health, as it will lead to more extreme weather, heat waves, drought, spread of infectious disease and food insecurity. Pollution already is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, killing on estimate over 9 million people yearly. Moreover, eating animal products is also directly detrimental to our health, the billions of animals we kill every year, lead to over 10 million human casualties every year as well.

Industrial animal farming is a biological time bomb
The next pandemic is already in the making

Let there be no misunderstanding: we cannot be healthy on a sick planet, surrounded by sick animals. We can hide behind masks and quarantine all we want, we should let go of the illusion that we are or can separate ourselves from our natural environment. We can simply not continue to destroy the life on our planet and somehow expect that our lives will not be affected by it or that technology will save us. If you needed another argument, this is now equally evident from a medical perspective. That is why here, now, is a call from the medical profession to adopt a One Health approach: recognizing that the health of humans cannot be seen in isolation from the health of animals and ecosystems. Science is affirming what spiritual traditions of old have always known: we are all connected, if we destroy life on our Mother Earth, we destroy ourselves.

Originally posted as a collaborative blog post on Re-Imagining our Future 

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[1] Common diseases like the flu, measles, the mumps and the cold all come from animals.¹

[2] The list is long: Swine flu, AIDS, SARS, MERS, ebola...

[3] Another danger is antibiotic resistance, as many farm animals are routinely fed antibiotics.

[4] In fact, here’s an article from Septembere 2019 warning for a coronavirus zoonosis in China.