During their first annual face-to-face meeting on March 27, 2023, the heads of the Quadripartite organizations working on the One Health concept issued an unprecedented call to strengthen global action in this regard.This came through a statement signed by the executive directors of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Animal Health Organization (WOAH), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). Where it was emphasized the need to participate in activities that include areas that no party alone can accomplish.The statement praised the recent challenges, especially the COVID-19 epidemic, monkey-pox, and Ebola. And other upcoming challenges, whether from common diseases, climate change, clearly show the need for a flexible health system and the acceleration of global action. The One Health project is the main approach to addressing these urgent and complex challenges facing our society.These organizations also called for strengthening cooperation and implementing an action plan that includes transforming the One Health project into clear governmental policies and procedures, and called on all stakeholders and partners to implement and strengthen the following measures:1. Prioritize One Health in the international political agenda, increase understanding and advocate for the adoption and promotion of the enhanced intersectoral health governance. The One Health approach should notably serve as a guiding principle in global mechanisms; including in the new pandemic instrument and the pandemic fund to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response;2. Strengthen national One Health policies, strategies and plans, costed and prioritized in line with the Quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action (OH JPA), to foster wider implementation across relevant sectors and at all levels;3. Accelerate the implementation of One Health plans, including supporting of national One Health governance and multisectoral coordination mechanisms, development of situation analyses, stakeholder mapping, priority setting, and metrics for One Health monitoring and evaluation frameworks;4. Build intersectoral One Health workforces that have the skills, capacities and capabilities to prevent, detect, control, and respond to health threats in a timely and effective way, by strengthening joint pre-service and continuing education for human, animal, and environmental health workforces;5. Strengthen and sustain prevention of pandemics and health threats at source, targeting activities and places that increase the risk of zoonotic spillover between animals to humans;6. Encourage and strengthen One Health scientific knowledge and evidence creation and exchange, research and development, technology transfer and sharing and integrating of information and data and facilitate access to new tools and technologies; and7. Increase investment and financing of One Health strategies and plans ensuring scaled up implementation at all levels, including funding for prevention of health threats at source.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

Leave A Comment

you might also like