At a Devex event held on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly, public health experts advocated a “One Health” approach — integrating the health of humans with that of the environment, plants, and animals — to better understand future health threats.
While such an approach could prevent pandemics and save governments trillions, One Health currently lacks consistent implementation and requires closer collaboration across disciplines, panelists said.
That could involve surveillance of animals — with partnerships among experts in the environment, wildlife, water, and agriculture sectors — to predict and ameliorate disease outbreaks that may spread to humans.