One Health Movement News / One Health Topics 'in' the News

The Gates Foundation says responding to deadly outbreaks isn’t its forte. But the Ebola crisis showed just how much global public health depends on the foundation.

Event will focus on nexus of climate change and public health

Today, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the American Public Health Association, The Climate Reality Project, Harvard Global Health Institute, the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment and Dr. Howard Frumkin, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, announced a Climate and Health Meeting that will take place on Feb. 16, 2017 at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Supported by the Turner Foundation and other organizations, the event will fill the gap left by the recently-canceled Climate and Health Summit originally to be hosted and sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others.

In a key event as a part of Johns Hopkins' Centennial celebration, prominent authors and journalists came together to speak about key considerations for the future of public health. In reference to pandemics and the future of public health Sonia Shah said, "Ultimately, the goal is to prevent,” Shah said. How? By restoring wild habitats and protecting the most vulnerable.  By approaching outbreaks holistically, and not just as biomedical phenomena. By re-imagining our relationship to the microbial world."

“There is no us and them,” she insisted. “Our health is connected to the health of society, but also wildlife, livestock and ecosystems. We live in a microbial world.”

A recent Lancet editorial emphasized the need for a well trained medical and public health workforce to ensure global health security and endorsed the Workforce 2030 strategy on human resources for health in hopes that WHO member states will as well at the World Health Assembly.

"Since the recent epidemics of Ebola, MERS, and Zika viruses, the ever-present threat of pandemic influenza, and now the menace of a yellow fever crisis, the notion of global health security has risen to the top of concerns facing the 194 member states attending next week’s 69th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland. Without global health security, the common goal of a more sustainable and resilient society for human health and well being will be unattainable."

"There can be no health security without a skilled health workforce. That is the lesson of Ebola that remains to be learned."

"Climate change will contribute to a wide array of public health issues in the United States in the coming decades, including everything from the spread of vector borne illness to the diminished nutritional content of food, according to a new White House report.

The report, the product of a three-year collaboration between a number of federal agencies, suggests that extreme heat alone will drive more than 11,000 additional deaths in the summer of 2030 and 27,000 additional deaths in the summer of 2100, barring an accelerated effort to address climate change."

Laura Kahn from the Program on Science & Global Security of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University is interviewed

Excerpt: "Southeast Asia is recognized as a hotspot for new viruses—it’s where virus hunters go to figure out what to put in next year’s flu vaccines. O’Leary says that Vietnam’s large population of domestic ducks, chickens, and pigs makes the country particularly vulnerable. “There’s a lot of potential contact with human populations,” he says. And then there’s the continued impact of human activity on forests. “The forests have been extensively logged, and so the opportunities for wildlife, for instance, to come into contact with domestic animals and into contact with humans are great,” he says.

Public health leaders in Vietnam are well aware that the country is a breeding ground for new diseases. And they’re sold on One Health, both for Vietnam itself and for global health security. “Diseases used to be enclosed in certain regions or countries,” says Dr. Tran Dac Phu, head of the Ministry of Health’s Preventive Health Department. “Now globalization has made them easier to spread.” In 2003, Vietnam was the second country to report a case of SARS, a disease that whipped up waves of panic as it threatened to spread around the world. It was also the first country to contain the outbreak."

The argument for improving public health education through case studies and blending disciplines has been made for the past decade, setting the stage for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education that will build workforce capacity in science and practice to solve complex public health problems.

James Steele, DVM, MPH, passed away on November 10, 2013, in Houston; he was 100 years old. Jim Steele was an extraordinary man. All of the dimensions of his life were on a grand scale. He was larger than life in so many ways; his vision, his leadership, his accomplishments in public health, his worldwide friendships, his mentorship of scores of young acolytes who came within his orbit, his extraordinary memory, his bear hugs, and his longevity were all manifestations of his boundless enthusiasm for life.

The full article can be found here: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/20/3/im-2003_article#suggestedcitation

Schultz, Myron G. "In Memoriam: James Harlan Steele (1913–2013)". Emerg. Infect. Dis.20.3 (2014): n. pag. Web. 14 Aug. 2016.