2022 has been a busy and productive year for WHO’s One Health Initiative, together with other quadripartite members, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and World Organization for Animal Health. (WOAH), launched the One Health Joint Action Plan.
The plan integrates systems and capacities to better prevent, anticipate, detect and respond to health threats collectively. Ultimately, this coordination should improve the health of people, animals, plants and the environment, contributing to sustainable development.
The plan was launched on 18 October 2022, during a joint event at the World Health Summit in Berlin, organized by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Museum für Naturkunde and the Planet Foundation healthy-Healthy people.
(Image credit: World Health Congress One)
It was then presented at the biennial World Health Congress, held this year in Singapore. The focus of that conference was how One Health could support the recovery from COVID-19 by integrating science, policy and clinical practice. The pandemic has prompted many governments to seek guidance, and the One Health Joint Action Plan is providing them with a framework for moving forward.
Breaking the silos that exist between sectors and disciplines will require innovative approaches and the strengthening of social, administrative, scientific, economic and political will. Greater investment in applied and multidisciplinary implementation research, including social behavior change across the spectrum, from building new knowledge to piloting and scaling, is needed to enable sustainable, locally appropriate interventions and evidence-based that channels scientific research into positive change.
The Quadrilateral is currently developing an implementation framework to operationalize the One Health Joint Action Plan at all levels and to support countries to establish or further strengthen their One Health systems and capacities.
