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WHAT IS ONE HEALTH?

‘One Health’ or ‘One Medicine’ proposes the unification of the medical and veterinary professions with the establishment of collaborative ventures in clinical care, surveillance and control of cross-species disease, education, and research into disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, therapy and vaccination. The concept encompasses the human population, domestic animals and wildlife and the impact that environmental changes (‘environmental health’) such as global warming will have on these populations.

WHAT IS THE WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE?

The current definition of One Health largely focuses upon the interactions between man, domestic production animals, wildlife and the environment. The small companion animals (principally dogs and cats, but also including exotic pets such as rodents, chickens, reptiles, fish, birds and small porcines) are generally not considered within One Health initiatives. The significance of small animals in this area has to date been understated when one considers:
• The growing number of animals of these species kept for companionship or working purposes
• The global mobility of small animals through more accessible pet travel
• The susceptibility of these species to a range of zoonotic infectious diseases and the status of some of these species as reservoirs for major human infections (e.g. rabies and leishmaniosis)
• The known interactions between these species and wildlife and production animals
• The importance of companion animals in society (the human – companion animal bond)
• The valuable lessons to be learnt from the scientific investigation of spontaneously arising disease in these species, which mimic diseases of man.
The WSAVA One Health Committee was convened in 2010 with the fundamental remit of redressing this ‘imbalance’ and positioning the small companion animals firmly within the global One Health initiative.

WHO SITS ON THE WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE?

The WSAVA One Health Committee comprises a group of academic and governmental experts in companion animal zoonotic infectious disease and comparative medicine, together with first opinion small animal practitioner representation. Committee members come from four continents and include representatives of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

THE WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE
M.J. Day [Chair; University of Bristol, UK]
J. Kirpensteijn [WSAVA Board; Utrecht University, the Netherlands]
A. Thiermann [OIE; Paris, France]
C. Rubin [CDC; Atlanta, USA]
M. Lappin [Colorado State University, USA)
S. Cleaveland [Glasgow University, UK]
C. Khanna [NIH; Maryland, USA]
C. Palatnik-de-Sousa [Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]
U. Karkare [Practitioner Representative; Mumbai, India]

AFFILIATE MEMBERS
E. Breitschwerdt [North Carolina State University, USA]
T. Kuiken [Erasmus University, the Netherlands]
J. McQuiston [CDC, Atlanta, USA]

WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE MEETINGS

The inaugural meeting of the WSAVA One Health Committee was held in Orlando, Florida on 13 – 14th January 2011.

WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE: THE HUMAN-COMPANION ANIMAL BOND

The WSAVA One Health Committee recognizes the significance of the role of companion animals in human society and the wide ranging benefits to human health of association with pets. These interactions include the proven benefits of association with pets in childhood development, care of the ill and elderly and institutionalized populations. The WSAVA One Health Committee will work together with the WSAVA Wellness Committee to promote this important aspect of veterinary medicine.

WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE: COMPARATIVE AND TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE

The WSAVA One Health Committee recognizes the value of the scientific investigation of the range of spontaneously arising canine and feline neoplastic, degenerative, immune-mediated and other diseases which mimic the homologous human diseases. Advances in genomic technology now mean that unparalleled value can be obtained from this area of comparative medicine. The WSAVA One Health Committee promotes and endorses high quality comparative and translational research of naturally occurring disease in companion animal populations. The Committee supports research performed in a clinical patient-based setting with appropriate legal and ethical approval.

WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE: ZOONOTIC INFECTIOUS DISEASE

The WSAVA One Health Committee believes that the greatest impact and relevance for its work lies in the area of zoonotic infectious diseases. The strength of the committee’s expertise lies in this area with experts in the major companion animal zoonotic infectious diseases and the surveillance experience of the CDC and OIE. The committee appreciates that there are already many excellent initiatives related to key zoonotic diseases, and in particular rabies. Whilst the committee endorses and supports such initiatives, it recognizes that it does not have the resource or time to allocate to developing its own major new projects.
The committee recognizes the significant lack of co-ordinated small companion animal zoonotic disease surveillance internationally and is producing a position paper on this topic.

The committee recognizes that there is potential for the WSAVA global network to be used to rapidly disseminate information related to global disease pandemics, but more significantly for the practitioner network to be used as a conduit for infectious disease surveillance and reporting. However, in order to set up such a surveillance scheme and ensure the quality of the data, very large-scale funding would be required and this is beyond the current scope of the OHC.
The strength of the WSAVA lies in scientific education and communication and in order to conform to this strength the most relevant output from this committee will be in the provision of quality information for the global practitioner network. This will be provided via the medium of these webpages and the WSAVA One Health Facebook page.

THE WSAVA GLOBAL ONE HEALTH AWARD

The WSAVA One Health Committee announces establishment of the WSAVA Global One Health Award that will be given to an individual who has been very prominent in One Health. The award will be made at the annual Congress (not necessarily every year) and will be accompanied by a One Health lecture.
Additionally, the committee wishes to encourage younger members of the profession to engage with One Health and so will make a second award to a presenter of a poster or talk at the annual congress that emphasizes the One Health message.

WSAVA ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE SPONSORS

The WSAVA One Health Committee is supported by the WSAVA Foundation through a consortium of industry sponsors who have generously provided funding to permit the committee to undertake a 3-year programme of work.

The industry sponsors are equal partners in this exciting endeavour and the committee and the WSAVA thank them for their support. The sponsorship partners (in alphabetical order) are:

• Bayer Healtcare Animal Health
• Hills Pet Nutrition
• Intervet Schering Plough Animal Health
• Merial
• Nestle Purina
• Novartis Animal Health
• Pfizer Animal Health
• Waltham

ONE HEALTH COMMITTEE IN THE NEWS

Recent media releases featuring the WSAVA One Health Committee

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION RESOURCES

Additional One Health information resources, including WSAVA One Health Committee publications

UPCOMING ONE HEALTH MEETINGS

SUVEPA, the Uruguayan Veterinary Association of Small Animal Specialists, an Association that is member of WSAVA and FIAVAC, in association with the SMVU, the Uruguayan Veterinary Association and CEVEMA (the Maldonado Veterinary Association) are organizing the VIII Ibero American FIAVAC Congress to be held in Punta del Este, Uruguay next November 24 to 26, www.fiavac2011.org

Given the role of the Veterinary profession in Public Health and Epidemiologic Surveillance and taking into account the constant evolution of ecosystems and their influence on the geographical distribution of many diseases, the Organizing Committee decided to also include the Ibero American Symposium of Emerging and Reemerging Zoonotic Diseases.
With the conviction that the integrated control and surveillance of Zoonotic diseases is the key for success, this symposium adheres to the One Health concept, , thus integrating physicians, veterinary doctors, epidemiologists, public health workers and international, governmental and non- governmental institutions.
The close relationship between human family members and small companion animals (including dogs and cats and also exotic pets such as rodents) and the known interactions of pets with wildlife and production animals, raises concern about the intersection of wild and urban cycles of disease. For this reason, t the Scientific Committee decided to include the following topics:
• Chiroptera Rabies vs Canine and Feline Rabies, just at one game distance
• Leishmaniasis, Epidemiology and behavior of the disease in a partially virgin continent
• Hantavirus, strategies for epidemiological control
• Leptospirosis interactions in prevention and risk communication
• Tick Transmitted Diseases, the tip of the iceberg
You are all invited to visit our web page http://fiavac2011.org/simposio.php as well as our beautiful country, the congress will be held in Spanish and part of it will be translated to Portuguese.

Catalogue of Global One Health Events