One Health studies human/animal links

In many regions around the world, people are living longer and healthier lives. To keep it this way in the light of new environmental concerns, population growth and food security, there is a need for various professional disciplines to work together to attain better health for people, animals, plants and the environment.

In areas where people and animals live near one another, they can get infected with diseases that are food-borne, spread between animals and humans, or by parasites. Recent examples of these new and emerging diseases include Ebola, MERS, avian flu (H5N1) and swine flu (H1N1). Dengue and rabies are examples of disease people get from insects and animals.

That we are now concerned with the environmental conditions in Boracay comes from our understanding that waste dumped in or near water systems affect entire communities – plants, animals, and people. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment notes that in some areas, the stress of increasing food production affects fresh water supplies, changes microbial patterns, and leads to the worsening of environment and natural resources.

With this is mind, a Commission on Higher Education (CHED) – Philippine California Advanced Research Institute (PCARI) team from the University of the Philippines and University of California Davis are working toward a health viewpoint that shifts from a human-centric point-of-view to a broader “One Health” (OH) that pays attention to the links among humans, animals, plants and the environment. This OH approach is part of the priorities of the Institute for Health Innovation and Translational Medicine (IHITM), one of the Research and Development Institutes of CHED-PCARI, according to IHTM director, Dr. Ernelea Cao. The IHITM supports efficient and cost-effective technologies to diagnose diseases, monitor their incidence and prevalence for interventional management and preventive medicine. The World Health Organization defines OH as an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation, and researches to address real world problems in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve beneficial public health outcomes.

Given the increasing awareness of the link between human, animal, plant and environmental health, and the role this ecosystem plays, there are key benefits of the OH approach in improving public health. OH improves formal exchanges of information among professionals involved in the care of animals, humans, plants and environment resulting to better disease surveillance, prevention and response. The information gathered can then guide policies focused to better address disease prevention. With OH, we may achieve better food safety, security, and productivity.

Led by UP Manila vice chancellor and associate professor of Physiology and Medicine Dr. Michael Tee and UC Davis director of global health Dr. Michael Wilkes, the PCARI IHITM 2017-16 team that includes former UPLB College of Veterinary Medicine dean Dr. Loinda Baldrias, UCD veterinary epidemiologist Dr. Sophia Papageorgiou, Dr. Ronnie Domingo of the Bureau of Animal Industries, UPLB Crop Science director Dr. Edna Aguilar and network theory expert UP Diliman professor Dr. Jaime Caro has been working with Los Banos Municipal Mayor Caesar Perez, municipal health officer Dr. Alvin Isidoro and municipal agriculturist Cheryll Gonzales to train and empower a new breed of community One Health workers.

According to Dr. Tee, “In pursuing this project on ‘Innovations in Early Detection and Interventions in Human, Animal, and Plant Health,’ our team is also creating hand-held applications capable of big data analytics to discover emerging interdisciplinary health patterns. One Health workers (OHWs) who will be carefully trained and supervised, are to 1) use technical devices to provide health advice at the household level, 2) use this same technology to collect and aggregate health data (animals, humans and plants) across villages or regions to enable rapid detection of emerging diseases and budding epidemics, and 3) facilitate the timely and appropriate referral to more advanced health care experts by providing secure and private electronic medical records of all encounters.” Dr. Tee hopes that the output of this project can be replicated in other communities not just here in the Philippines but also in countries where highly trained health care workers are not always available.

Former dean Balrias stresses that “Up to 60 percent of new infectious diseases come from either domestic or wildlife animals. The health of our animals must be safeguarded to ensure our own health, our food safety and food security.”

Dr. Wilkes adds that “The use of mobile technology is a worldwide phenomenon both in and outside of healthcare.  As availability of telephone and internet access has improved there are now reports of mobile technology being used to assist CHWs particularly related to delivering prenatal care and family planning services.  Furthermore, these tools have been both accepted and valued at the level of both the CHW and the public.”

Even in rural areas in the Philippines, media is heavily used to communicate and spread information, says Dr. Tee. Advantages in technology providing “just-in-time” health guidance to OHWs would result in timelier care, a higher quality of evidence-based care, improved privacy, and more rapid resolution of problems including proper referrals.

Using evidence-based information, the team is training community-based OH workers to recognize common human, animal, and plant health problems. They are developing interactive mobile applications for community workers to use as digital handbook and data gathering tool. The tools, linked to secure cloud-based server, is important for the collection and analysis of data coming from OHWs, with easy to read statistical output, and up-to-date location-linked information for use by the municipal and even such regional authorities as the Bureau of Animal Industry, Bureau of Plant Industry, and Municipal Health Office. The data gathered will be analyzed alongside population, environmental and weather information to identify early signal and trends of possible health events.

One Health as envisioned by this CHED-PCARI team from the University of the Philippines and University of California has the unique potential of preventing disease outbreaks as decision-makers will be provided timely information that are useful in the deployment and mobilization of resources in response to growing health threats.

This early, the team is preparing policy briefs that tries to identify legal and policy difficulties in implementing OH.  They are preparing a proposal for implementing a new OH workforce alongside well established roles and responsibilities of other community health workers, paying attention to the needs and perspectives of various stakeholders.

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Email: [email protected].