One Health
I’m prompted to post the following. It’s an enduring passion of mine which I should have vigorously pursued. I’ve done nothing. Thank you, Dr Mark Schipp, for your most erudite encomium. I gratefully acknowledge my professional colleagues and the Australian Veterinary Association.
See: Dr Mark Schipp on operationalising One Health across the veterinary profession (ava.com.au)
Dr Mark Schipp on operationalising One Health across the veterinary profession.
13 Jul 2023
ACVO Mark Schipp with Tiggy Grillo and Steve Unwin from the WHA alongside WOAH DG Monique Eliot at WOAH GS 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of One Health, the collaborative, multisectoral and transdisciplinary approach to optimising the health of all living things, that recognises the interdependence of the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment. The One Health approach is essential to preventing, predicting, detecting, and responding to future global health threats. Given the importance of animals including wildlife in our lives, veterinarians are at the coalface of operationalising One Health and have an important role to play.
The Quadripartite Alliance One Health expert panel’s new definition for One Health is ‘an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems’, which emphasises the importance of mobilising different sectors, disciplines and communities to collaboratively manage health challenges. One Health bridges health and conservation, and the underlying principles of this approach emphasise the importance of wildlife conservation and biodiversity to ecosystem health. A clear definition enables progress to operationalise One Health and the ability to monitor and evaluate the benefits which is essential for ongoing funding, policy integration and sustainability.
Zoonotic disease threats
Zoonotic spill-over events from animals with pandemic-potential have been occurring more frequently in recent decades. Examples include Ebola, West Nile, Nipah and Marburg viruses. Here in Australia, there have been at least three such new diseases that have emerged spilling over into livestock or humans, including Hendra virus (1994), Australian Bat Lyssavirus (1996), and Menangle virus (1997). The expansion of Japanese encephalitis virus to southern states in Australia last year required a One Health approach across jurisdictions including the need for rapid data sharing. Learnings from this outbreak have greatly assisted the One Health approach to the design and function of the Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC), which is being established to improve Australia’s response and preparedness for public health emergencies especially those with zoonotic origin.
A paradigm shift
Since early 2020 Australia has taken a leadership role advocating for global reforms to international health systems, to focus on sorely needed prevention-focussed interventions that take a One Health approach to addressing the drivers of disease emergence and prevention of future pandemics at their source in animals and the environment.
This is a seismic shift away from a collective emphasis on response-focussed measures that aim to contain and control pathogens after their transmission through the human population. To support this, the Australian government provided seed funding to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) to instigate a new global program aimed at identifying and mitigating high-risk interactions along the wildlife supply chain, reducing the risk of disease spillover events at markets selling wildlife and the development of guidelines and standards that support individual countries to address risks in their local context. My office is also actively engaged in Pandemic Treaty negotiations within which One Health and prevention-focussed measures are one of our top priorities.
As with all change journeys, they begin at home, and while we’re advocating internationally for a stronger One Health focus and amplifying the voice of veterinarians and their important role in advancing One Health globally, we are also looking at how we can do more to implement One Health in our own backyard. Our new Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer One Health team brings together existing work and expertise on antimicrobial resistance, usage and stewardship, wildlife health, zoonotic diseases, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, pandemic prevention, environmental biosecurity liaison, and current issues such as Japanese encephalitis, high pathogenicity avian influenza, rabies and international Pandemic Treaty negotiations.
One Health initiatives
Mitigating the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) involves crucial One Health collaboration. Australia’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy – 2020 and beyond and the supporting One Health Master Action Plan provide the overarching direction for Australia’s actions to prevent AMR. Every veterinarian can play a role by practicing good antimicrobial stewardship to preserve antimicrobials as an important shared resource. Resources to assist practitioners in this role are available via the AMR Vet Collective.
My office has also been working to bolster the capacity of Australia’s national surveillance system to detect and prevent zoonotic diseases emerging from the human-animal-environment interface, including those with pandemic potential. While over three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife reservoirs, surveillance in these populations is much more challenging than for domestic animals. The department’s One Health Surveillance Initiative announced last year includes investment towards preventing, detecting and mitigating the impacts of emerging infectious animal diseases, including those with pandemic potential, and is being delivered by Wildlife Health Australia (WHA). The funding expands WHA’s early detection capabilities and supports increased investigation of wildlife mortality events to ensure their potential to impact human, other animal or environmental health can be better assessed. WHA recently achieved official designation from WOAH as a Collaborating Centre for Wildlife Health Risk Management an important endorsement for the One Health approach.
Last year we welcomed the commitment to establish an Australian CDC to better protect and promote the health and wellbeing of all Australians. My office is committed to partnering on its design and implementation and has been advocating for the CDC to be built on strong One Health foundations. The current Australian public health infrastructure is fragmented and lacks cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary prevention, preparedness and response capabilities. In particular, the important impact of ecosystem health on the health of animals and humans is vastly underrepresented in public health discourse and planning. The CDC offers an unparalleled opportunity to create an innovative and future-focussed independent agency to addresses gaps in the current health infrastructure and position Australia at the global forefront of health science, policy and One Health implementation.
One Health toward a sustainable healthy future as developed by the OHH
The veterinary community
Gratefully acknowledge Dr Cristy Secombe of the AVA
Veterinarians are integral to the success of operationalising the One Health approach, and my office welcomes the opportunity to engage with the veterinary community so together we address the One Health challenges ahead. This communication is dedicated to my late colleague and friend Dr Mike Nunn who was a true pioneer of the One Health approach.
For the latest updates on the work of the Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer, please follow our Twitter channel, and you can also follow me on LinkedIn and the Australian Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Beth Cookson on LinkedIn.
See: The veterinary workforce shortage – it’s a matter of public good (ava.com.au)
The veterinary workforce shortage – it’s a matter of public good.
14 Jul 2023
The profession has been acutely aware of its inadequate capacity to deliver veterinary knowledge and services to meet community demand for quite some time. Given the work the AVA has been doing to raise awareness of this issue in the media, with our stakeholders and government and by encouraging others to talk about it, the wider community is starting to take notice – and they are worried, as they should be.
The NSW Government has set up a parliament inquiry to investigate this issue, which was announced following the AVA’s NSW Election Platform advocacy on key priorities pre and post the NSW election, including rural and regional workforce issues. This inquiry has generated significant media interest that has given the AVA the opportunity to talk about the enormity of the issue and the importance of addressing it. Since the beginning of July, this topic has gained significant traction with 73 media mentions in a range of media that are distributed around the country including The Australian, The Guardian, Herald Sun, ABC and the Weekly Times.
Other organisations with a stake in animal health have echoed our concerns. For example, we were very pleased to see the acknowledgement and support from the NSW Farmers Federation through the their recent media release about the importance of veterinarians.
As the veterinary profession knows when we are looking at individual animals that NSW Farmers Federation representative Mrs Shane Kilby talks about in the media release we are also undertaking passive surveillance to maintain the integrity of Australia’s biosecurity system. This is a veterinary service that benefits the community as a whole rather than just an individual owner. This is known as a public good or public benefit.
One of the underlying causes contributing to the veterinary workforce issue, is the inability of the profession to recoup the costs associated with delivering veterinary services that serve the public good.
Another example of a public good that the profession provides is veterinary care to wildlife. Veterinary care of wildlife is a service the community expects to be provided to Australia’s indigenous animals. The majority of this is through the private veterinary sector, with evidence suggesting most practices see around 500 cases per year and over 90% of practices rarely receiving any reimbursement to cover the costs of providing these services. Veterinary care, particularly more complex care, is also provided through veterinary wildlife charities. Government support for these charities is an example of public funding to deliver public good. That’s why the AVA is very concerned to see that the NSW Government has recently revoked promised funding to a charity that provides veterinary care to wildlife.
We continue to advocate strongly that part of the solution to create a thriving sustainable veterinary profession is to ensure the profession can recoup the costs of providing veterinary services that are of public good.