Hi everybody, this is likely to give you a short introduction to One Health and that concept. My name is Lotta Berg, I'm a veterinarian by training, I am a professor in animal environment and health. So I work mainly with animal health, so preventive herd health and also animal welfare for farm animals but also other species. I'm employed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU, and I'm located in the town of Skara, which is one of our campuses. So this introduction will cover the following topics just to give you a basis for more in depth discussions on One Health. I will deeply go into, sorry, briefly get into the history of One Health on how the concept developed and why this is important, why I think that it is important? I will also too touch upon the link between One Health & more, even newer concept known as One Welfare. I will ask you to think about how we can avoid One Health becoming the great theory of everything that covers all types of sciences because that's always risk when you have a novel field or a buzzword, and I will possibly end with some personal reflections. So the brief history in practice, it's been done for a long time of course that animals and humans share some health features. But this approach was, as a One Health, as more of an identified approach, was developed during the late 19th and early 20th century by people such as Rudolf Virchow and Calvin Schwabe. So in this process both physicians and veterinarians were involved and originally the focus was on medicine or health. So a lot of focusing on animals and food of animal origin as a source of infection for humans. So basically, looking at zoonosis, seeing how animal health could affect human health, kind of a one way aspect and limited to traditional infectious diseases, direct contamination or [undetected word]. With time, it developed further. So from going from one medicine, we have now come to encompass a wider perspective and now also not just somatic infections, but also other health problems that we share between species are involved. Looking at, for example, comparative medicine where metabolic diseases can be similar in humans and animals. And not just using animals as models, as lab animals, but also as sent sentinels in some cases and just comparing the environment we live in etcetera, see how we can learn from each other. There are other terms being used in this area as well, depending on whom you talk to, people have their favorite expressions. There is one or a couple of also trying to launch the the concept of Zoobiquity, trying to to make it more equal that all species should be seen as having an equal value. There's a term Evolutionary medicine, looking at how medicine and the link between different species has evolved over time with evolution. There is the Ecohealth approach which is quite commonly applied where it's not just limited to animals, the animal kingdom, including humans, but also looking at entire ecosystems, plants etcetera, to see how it's all linked together. So it's an even wider scope of One Health. And we should also remember that initially we focused a lot on preventive medicine for the individua, stopping people from getting sick from being in contact with animals, for eating them. We have now come to a level where or many researchers are looking at the population level, biosecurity etcetera, but also at the ecosystem level of health. What happens if we destroy the rainforest? How will that affect animal health and human health, etcetera, so there are several levels and it has become a wider concept over time. This is the One Health umbrella which was actually developed by the One Health Sweden network in collaboration with the One Health initiative, autonomous probono team in the US. Something like 10 years ago, just to illustrate how it's linked together, we have the demarcation One health, the way we see it. it's not necessarily the only way of seeing it, where we look at what are the specialties involved because to be trans disciplinary, we need to have disciplines otherwise you just end up with a big part of soup. Look at that, trying to cover environmental health, ecology, veterinary medicine, public health, human medicine, molecular and microbial medical science, and also health economics, because that's how to influence the behavior of people. But also looking at different concepts of health, individual, population, ecosystems, as I mentioned before. And to your left, the traditional somatic infection approach that of course covers bacteria, viral vector-borne, parasites infections, fungus fungi infections but also bio threats. You have food safety and anti microbial resistance, which is really important here, which has been spread to a large extent from humans to animals, and the other way around, and various intervention strategies. But also then covering comparative medicine, as I mentioned, metabolic disorders, joint and skeletal diseases, cancer and cardio vascular diseases. But also environmental hazards exposure, different toxins in our environment for example, and the human animal bond. So, we are moving away from just looking at somatic infections. So why is it important? Well, basically, from a biological point of view, humans are just another animal species. We may think that we're different and we are, we have very special skills compared to all other animals or species, but different skills, characteristics and capacities in our possibilities to right to convey what we feel etcetera. A lot of animals can communicate but we do it differently and discussing future aspects of various development, etcetera, but from a biological point of view, we are all susceptible to infections being them bacteria, virusis, fungi, bacterias, like any other species and many organisms can infect more than one species. Sometimes, this one is humans. There are viruses that will affect, I don't know what ruminants, only cows and sheep and goats, others that will affect cattle and peaks and others that will only affect certain types of bats and whatever. And some that will include those species and humans in their list of susceptible organisms. So yes, we're different in many ways but not when it comes to being host to a lot of diseases. And then of course as I said, we had the environmental exposure that is similar for some animals, especially our pets are kept in our households and also metabolic diseases where we tend to develop the same problems when we start feeding our, again, pets the same way as we eat ourselves. And then, you know, One health has become increasingly important now for example with the pandemic, coronavirus, Covid, because it's become obvious that okay, viruses that may emanate from animal populations can cause a lot of problems in humans, and of course the other way around. And and this, you know, regardless of if these pandemics have developed in humans, which they still do to a large extent, but sometimes from animals as well or from a non human animal species or constantly shifting between species such as traditional influenza viruses that may start in animals going to humans going back to animals, etcetera. So what we could discuss here is if the anthropcentrism in this is important. The fact that we tend to focus on human outcomes as the most important. We want to prevent humans from falling ill. Preferably, we also want to prevent diseases in animals, of course, but it's sort of, we tend to do it having the humans as our final outcome, that it's good to prevent animals from becoming sick and carrying infections because otherwise they can spread it to humans, not so much maybe for the animals themselves. So this can be which is a typical anthropocentric approach if this is a problem or not can be discussed. But think about it, when you talk about one health in the future, if if it's just mainly there to improve our health or if it's there to improve the health also of animals and if so what species of animals. I will come back to that. I just touch briefly upon the link between one health and one welfare. Because we know that the welfare of human animal owners and caretakers, just looking after the animals, will influence the welfare of animals and the other way around. If the humans are doing well, they are more likely to treat the animals well. And then, I mean, feeling well from it from a health perspective and that includes mental health, if you have an animal owner who's really ill or who is not mentally doing fine, depressed for example, or taking drugs or whatever, that will definitely risk taking over a piece of her life and make it difficult to look after animals in a proper way. If the animals are not doing well. If you heard of animals that you depend on for your livelihood is really ill, suffering from some kind of terrible disease. As an owner, you will definitely not feel well either. So that is something to bear in mind. This of course relates to farm animals, but also to companion animals, working animals. Looking at poorer countries, if you have your donkey carrying your work, that's the one that will, you will rely upon and if it's suddenly lame and can't carry whatever water or bricks or whatever you're supposed to do, then as an owner it will influence your income and your well being. Wildlife as well, if people are afraid of contracting diseases from wildlife, they may start tried to kill wild life. We've seen that for example, in bats, in some countries where people are afraid of transmission of disease from bats and that will of course influence bat welfare and also species protection and where conservation issues if animals actually become extinct due to that reason; regionally, locally, or generally. So, anthrozoology is an important part here where we have human-animal interaction, how we influence each other the animals that we come in contact with and that can be socially can be culturally in various intersections that are important for our welfare, but also for the welfare of the animals. A lot of us will, if we see animals that suffer for some reason, it can be disease, but also from poor welfare conditions like animals in small dirty cages, they will influence how we feel in our welfare and level of frustration. There's also a link between human violence to other humans and abuse of animals, which is well established. Unfortunately, we know that if, for example, when it comes to male violence towards women or children, if there are animals in the family as well, they often get beaten up or kicked around as well or are used as hostage to tell people to "behave or I'll kill your dog." So, this is another aspect that's really part of the One welfare concept, to being free, but One welfare is not just about fluffy things as it does also cover the health aspect because being free from disease and pain is an important aspect of welfare. If you're sick and if you're in pain, your welfare is not going to be good. Anyway, so there's an umbrella for this as well. Someone developed it after the One Health umbrellas as a model, looking at various aspect where human and animal welfare touch each other. It could be looking at homeless animals and humans. It could be worrying about livestock, food safety, of course. Looking at productivity, how does that influence animal welfare and consumer welfare? What about animals being used as weapons? Fighting dogs for gangs, for example, using animals in homes for the elderly to improve their welfare. How does that improve the welfare of the animals? Using animals in prison projects, etcetera, etcetera? So just to illustrate that there are so many different aspects to this. So then how to avoid One health becoming the great theory of everythingm and I think that we must be aware that there is a buzzword trap, that anything can be labeled One health if it's remotely related to somebody's health somehow. And then it all looks fine and nice and of course we should take everybody into consideration. But then it's kind of flat. Are there no conflicts in this? Can anyone actually be against the one health approach? Well, is it traditional medicine? Is that modern medicine? There's a lot of discussion actually in the Ecohealth community about taking also traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples cultural into account here, which can sometimes clash with the more western approach on what medicine is. So, this definitely needs to be discussed a lot more. We can also think about whose interest matters when I was talking about the anthropocentrism. Can and should the one health approach benefit all organisms in an ecosystem? Can it? If we want to get rid of terrible parasites that make people sick or viruses that kill all herds of animals, livestock, well, that's not good for parasite well being. Or maybe we can talk about well-being in parasites or the welfare of viruses but we can talk about their survival as species. What if we eradicate a virus species? Is that a problem or not? Or should we protect their interests too? And how do we weigh this? And this is of course theoretical reasoning but I think it's part of what we need to deal with. We can't just ignore that aspect, we are far from done with it. We still tend to fall back to focusing on, first saving human health and welfare. Secondly, livestock health and welfare. Thirdly, wildlife and then who cares about the viruses. So, this is just for your mind to think about. So, I'm working with One health in my research and teaching to vet students to animal welfare and ecology students. We have made some efforts trying to teach vet students and human medicine students together but it's challenging because of the different backgrounds, but it's also very interesting. So, I would encourage anyone to do it and it does make a difference in practice using the One health concept because for example, if you want to stop the spread of some types of really contagious diseases, you know, you need to know the origin and the road and transmission, otherwise we'll end up with more pandemics, I'm sure, and you need to know that prevention has to influence more than one species. And then I think it's really fun as well, because working with One health, we can go to conferences and engage yourselves in organizations in relation to One health and learn a lot, exchanging thoughts and ideas and this is what I've been doing and it has widened my perspective as a researcher so that I'm no longer sort of narrow minded when it comes to animal production. Yes, I maybe was when I was younger, maybe I would have matured anyway. But I think the exchange of thoughts and ideas is really important given you here a few examples of things that I and my colleagues, especially one of them known as Henrik Lerner, have published in this way. We looked into the concept from a more theoretical point of view. He's a philosopher, what is it and how can we use One health? What are the different approaches to health? Some examples? And how do they relate to each other and also The Ethics of One Health? How does it relate to the sustainability goals? Just to give you some ideas for the future. And with this, I thank you for your attention. Bye.
