John S. Mackenzie

Martyn Jeggo

Peter Daszak

Juergen A. Richt

One Health is an emerging concept that aims to bring together human, animal, and environmental health. Achieving harmonized approaches for disease detection and prevention is difficult because traditional boundaries of medical and veterinary practice must be crossed. In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was not the case—then researchers like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch and physicians like William Osler and Rudolph Virchow crossed the boundaries between animal and human health. More recently Calvin Schwabe revised the concept of One Medicine. This was critical for the advancement of the field of epidemiology, especially as applied to zoonotic diseases. The future of One Health is at a crossroads with a need to more clearly define its boundaries and demonstrate its benefits. Interestingly the greatest acceptance of One Health is seen in the developing world where it is having significant impacts on control of infectious diseases.

Food Safety and Security, and International and National Plans for Implementation of One Health Activities

One Health: The Human-Animal-Environment Interfaces in Emerging Infectious Diseases

The One Health concept recognizes that the health of humans, animals, and their ecosystems are interconnected, and that a coordinated, collaborative, multidisciplinary, and cross-sectoral approach is necessary to fully understand and respond to potential or existing risks that originate at the animal–human–ecosystems interfaces. Thus, the One Health concept represents a holistic vision for addressing some of the complex challenges that threaten human and animal health, food safety, and the environments in which diseases flourish. There are many examples showing how the health of humans is related to the health of animals and the environment. Diseases shared between humans and animals are zoonoses. Some zoonoses have been known for many years, whereas others have emerged suddenly and unexpectedly. Over 70% of all new emerging diseases over the past few decades have been zoonoses that have emerged from wildlife, most often from bats, rodents, or birds. Examples of zoonoses are many and varied, ranging from rabies to bovine tuberculosis, and from Japanese encephalitis to SARS. Clearly, a One Health approach is essential for understanding their ecology, and for outbreak response and the development of control strategies. However, the One Health concept and approach is much broader than zoonoses; it extends to including antimicrobial resistance, food safety, and environmental health and, consequently, impacts on global health security, economic wellbeing, and international trade. It is this breadth of One Health that connects the papers in this Special Issue.

Martyn Jeggo

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