One Health: what it is, and why it matters?

Abstract

A major lesson drawn from COVID-19 pandemic should be emphasize the importance of One Health. Although One Health is not an entirely new approach to global health, many professionals still need to familiarize themselves with its name, meaning, and outreach. We briefly introduce the concept and aim of the One Health approach and discuss its present relevance to human and animal life in our shared environment, in its objective of reducing infectious diseases risk, pandemic threats, and slowing down ecology destruction. Elementary and affordable local actions in support of One Health are also proposed.

Keywords

• One Health. COVID-19. Emergent diseases. Reemergent diseases. Animal health. Environmental health.