One Health and Human Well-Being

One Health Approach

  • Concept created in 2004.
  • Involves designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation, and research across multiple sectors for better public health outcomes (WHO, 2017).
  • Main Working Organizations:
    • World Health Organization (WHO)
    • Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
    • World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH)
    • United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Human Health and Well-Being

  • Intended Learning Outcomes:
    • Explain the concept of human health.
    • Differentiate between communicable and non-communicable diseases.
    • Examine current information on human health and well-being.
    • Discuss the sources and impacts of emerging diseases and pandemics.
    • Integrate personal health with animal and environmental health systems of the Earth.

Health and Wellbeing Definitions

  • Health: A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (WHO, 1948).
  • Wellbeing: A situation in which people are free to choose to do and be what they value (Sen 1999). Good health and wellbeing co-determine each other (Gatzweiler et al., 2017).
  • Wellness: Holistic integration of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being; fuels the body, engages the mind, and nurtures the spirit.

Health Challenges and Hazards

  • Attainment of overall wellness may face various health challenges or hazards.
  • Health hazards: Wellness risks, expressed as probabilities/chances, involving the probability of suffering harm from an agent causing injury, disease, death, economic loss, or damage.
General Categories of Health Hazards
  • Chemical hazards: Harmful chemicals in air, water, soil, food, and human-made products.
  • Natural hazards: Fire, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and storms.
  • Cultural hazards: Unsafe working conditions, unsafe highways, criminal assault, and poverty.
  • Lifestyle choices: Smoking, poor food choices, excessive alcohol consumption, and unsafe sex.
  • Biological hazards: More than 1,400 pathogens that can infect humans. A pathogen is a biological agent that can cause disease in another organism.
    • Bacteria
    • Viruses
    • Parasites
    • Protozoa
    • Fungi
Biological Hazards: Zoonoses and Emerging Diseases
  • Zoonoses: Diseases or infections naturally transmissible from animals to humans (WHO, 2020).
    • Pose health risks through deep interconnections of human, animal, and environmental health.
    • Approximately 60% of existing human infectious diseases are zoonotic.
    • About 75% of emerging infectious diseases (including Ebola, HIV, influenza, COVID-19) have an animal origin.
Viruses vs. Bacteria
  • Viruses: Smaller than bacteria; invade a cell and take over its genetic machinery to copy themselves, then multiply and spread, causing viral diseases (e.g., flu, AIDS). They can spread from person to person.
  • Bacteria: Single-cell organisms found everywhere; most are harmless or beneficial. Bacterial diseases result from infection as the bacteria multiply and spread.
Viral vs. Bacterial Cough
  • Mucus color:
    • White or clear mucus usually indicates a viral infection.
    • Green or yellow mucus is more likely to indicate a bacterial infection.
  • Other symptoms:
    • Viral infections of the upper respiratory system (e.g., common cold) often cause nasal symptoms like sneezing and a stuffy nose that clear up after a few days.
    • Bacterial infections may cause a fever above 38°C, chest pain, rapid breathing, and/or rapid pulse.
  • Important: Do not self-medicate. Antibiotics must be prescribed.
Disease Transmission
  • Transmissible disease: Infectious bacterial or viral disease that can be transmitted from one person to another (communicable).
  • Non-transmissible disease: Caused by a non-living agent/event and does not spread from person to person (noncommunicable) e.g., cardiovascular diseases, most cancers, asthma, and diabetes.

Infectious Disease Dynamics

  • Infectious diseases remain serious health threats, especially in less-developed countries.
  • Spread through air, water, food, and body fluids.
  • Sporadic Disease: Occurs only occasionally within a particular geographic area (e.g., tetanus, rabies, and plague).
  • Endemic Disease: Diseases that are always present within a particular geographic area (e.g., chicken pox, Malaria, Measles, Cholera, Influenza ).
  • Epidemic Disease: An outbreak occurs when there is a greater than usual number of cases of a disease in a particular region within a relatively short period of time. (e.g., EBOLA Virus, chicken pox, Malaria, Measles, Cholera, Influenza ).
  • Pandemic: A disease occurring in epidemic proportions in many countries simultaneously.

Global Health Crisis: COVID-19

  • Disease name: Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19
  • Virus taxonomy (name): Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2
  • First cases identified in people with pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019.
  • Possibilities of animal sources and animal-human transmission were reported and scientifically investigated.
  • Eventually, human-human viral transmission occurred.