WS 08 - Pandemics and Operationalizing One Health

In 2015, leaders from Germany, Norway, and Ghana initiated the Global Action Plan (GAP) for Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3), with the aim of accelerating progress towards healthy lives and wellbeing for all. Despite wide international endorsement of the GAP, progress towards SDG3 has been impeded by infectious disease pandemics, their profound impact on global health, and their economic and social consequences. Avian influenza, Ebola, and, most recently, COVID-19 provide examples.

While recent emerging infectious diseases have come about largely through viruses that spread from wild and domestic animals to humans, pandemics develop, in large part, due to human activity. The frequency and intensity of these pandemics and their effect on global health are interlinked with several factors, including poverty, food security, global trade and mobility, climate change, neglected tropical diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and an increasing burden of non-communicable diseases.

If the GAP is going to be successful in helping to achieve SDG3, coordinated and efficient action across multiple disciplines and sectors is necessary, and we need to take into account the risk of pandemics and how quickly they can roll back any progress previously made. In addition to the defined commitments and proposed actions of the GAP, One Health deepens our understanding of the human-animal-environment interface and provides an integrated approach to sustainability and health. This is critical for achieving the SDGs.

During last year’s World Health Summit, The Lancet One Health Commission undertook a consensus-seeking mission on the concept of One Health in one session and, in another, we examined the potential of One Health to catalyse the paradigm shift that the GAP demands and to accelerate progress towards SDG3. In this session, we will further explore how to operationalize One Health to address pandemics and, ultimately, to advance progress towards SDG3.