What went on last month (February 2021) in One Health?
In the EU...
To start with, Horizon Europe was launched on the 2nd of February 2021, and One Health will be central across all its research activities, as said by European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen: “we need to work together for our 'One Health'. This is why we will prioritise research on 'One Health' across Horizon Europe”. To keep in mind when setting up projects for Horizon Europe, is the gender and geographical balance, as described by this briefing of the European Parliament Think Tank.
EU commitment to the One Health approach is also evident by the support showed at the G7 (see for example this press release of the European Council), indicating again the intention of the EU of being an example to follow.
The EC wastes no time in operationalising its initiatives. A Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) was proposed in November 2020 as a new agency focused on anticipating threats, addressing supply chain issues etc (a sort of European BARDA), in the frame of the European Health Union (I should find time to write a blogpost about it). Now, even though the legislative proposal is due to the end of the year, A HERA Incubator is going to start “immediately” to tackle coronavirus variants. This HERA Incubator should boost cooperation and coordination between different actors involved in surveillance, vaccine development and production (i.e. industry), and vaccine approval (EMA). To my knowledge, this is the first HERA initiative to be launched.
Moving to the “One Health EU agencies”, so to speak, in the near future we can expect both ECDC and EFSA to improve their communication strategies, ECDC following an Ombudsperson evaluation, and EFSA to adapt to the new EU Regulation 2019/1381.
Ursula von der Leyen launching the HERA Incubator. Credit: https://ec.europa.eu
At the global level - the Tripartite...
Zooming out of Europe, I applaud the message of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who highlighted at the 27th Tripartite Annual meeting that the One Health concept should not be restricted to the classic triad (animals-humans-environment), but should increasingly consider new sectors and activities (e.g. deforestation, food trade, misuse of antibiotics).
Perhaps a first step to broaden the attention of the Tripartite is that during the upcoming FAO presidency, UNEP will formally join the FAO, OIE and WHO in the Tripartite (until now whenever UNEP was involved, the alliance went under the name of Tripartite Plus).
On the topic of antimicrobial resistance...
Moving our One Health attention to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a beloved topic of One Health professionals, the US based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) published its Report on the global burden of AMR, highlighting that the AMR levels of high income countries are converging to those of low and middle income countries (LMIC). On the one hand this means that high income countries’ strategy to decrease AMR are (slowly) working, on the other hand this highlights the increased access to antimicrobials of LMIC, as well as their probable misuse.
Still on the topic of AMR in LMIC, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published an exhaustive report, which highlights the importance of incorporating social sciences, because “[antibiotic] use in many LMICs does not primarily result from a lack of knowledge about AMR but is related to a web of social, economic, political, and historic conditions”. This again makes us wonder whether the classic One Health triad is really enough to tackle complex global issues.
On the topic of (re)emerging threats...
The characterisation of a novel bacterium causing a lethal disease in chimpanzees has been published on Nature Communications, and given that “the genetic and physiological similarities between humans and chimpanzees are often cited as predisposing them to cross-species pathogen exchange”, this is something of concern.
In addition there are reports of human cases of avian influenza in Russia, and a number of animal cases in Europe