One Health for One World
The One Health Alliance of South Asia (OHASA)
The notion that one health perspective can save lives is valuable and realistic. Specifically, the "One Health" perspective that incorporates human, domestic animal, wildlife, and ecosystem health has the potential to lead to effective solutions and save many lives.
Imagine a world where the next swine flu happened every few months and spread explosively around the globe from continent to continent. The next big infectious disease could be better at infiltrating our naïve immune systems than anything we have encountered before, and could complete a globe hop within a matter of days.
Extreme as that sounds, the threat is quite real. Research has shown that the frequency of emerging infectious disease outbreaks is increasing over time and that diseases originating in wildlife could lead to significant worldwide pandemics (Jones et al. 2008).
Luckily, there are people and organizations dedicated to working to prevent this from happening. One such alliance is the One Health Alliance of South Asia (OHASA), for which Wildlife Trust is a lead organizing body.
Check out this map of "hotspots" for global zoonotic emerging disease (e.g. H1N1, SARS, HIV), which shows the most at-risk areas in yellow, orange, and red. It is clear that South Asia is the largest region of risk, potentially due to the dense populations of people and livestock, and also the high wildlife biodiversity.
OHASA was created with this in mind. Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury of the Rockefeller Foundation, commented, "This collaboration will build stronger wildlife surveillance protocols and testing guidelines and will reinforce our data sets and improve lines of communication between ministries and the human, domestic animal and wildlife sector thus truly achieving a One Health approach."
As part of a trans-boundary surveillance effort, researchers have been collecting samples from hundreds of animals in Southwest China, Malaysia, India and Bangladesh, and testing them for new pathogens. By looking at data over a large spatial scale, scientists may be able to see patterns of emergence as they happen and to inform the groups who can take action.
In 2009, Wildlife Trust put a spotlight on disease risk by writing a paper about the global trade in wildlife that was published in the journal Science. The paper showed that wild animal trade, which can total more than 250 million animals per year, led to the emergence of SARS in 2003 in China. Wildlife Trust scientists identified that bats traded in these markets are the reservoirs for SARS-like coronaviruses.
Through research such as this and other collaborative efforts, Wildlife Trust and OHASA are making strides in the initial phases of a strategy that will put us in better position to understand, defend against and prevent emerging infectious disease outbreaks.
OHASA's long-term goal is to set up collaboration among South Asian scientists, non-government organizations, and governmental agencies to address the wildlife trade, health and conservation issues that extend across borders. The idea is that, by increasing surveillance and communication, we will be more prepared for whatever comes.
As Dr. Raman Sukumar, world-renowned Asian elephant expert and Wildlife Trust Alliance member, says, "OHASA will erase the lines of international borders and focus on a targeted regional effort to safeguard human, wildlife and ecosystem health."
