The last one and a half years have drastically shown how vulnerable mankind is on earth. The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the many problems we face today but also in the future. Since Covid-19 disease originates from zoonotic coronavirus, there is a strong linkage between humans, animals, and the environment. Experts suggest that the 2019 pandemic outbreak was not the last one to come [1]. In order to tackle the problem and to be prepared for the future an integrated perspective is required. This is where the One Health approach comes into play.

What is the One Health approach?

Created in 2005, the One Health concept incorporates a multisector expertise and follows a holistic and transdisciplinary approach [2]. Generally speaking, health refers to the wellbeing of the physical, mental, and social status. But because the health issues are broad and complex, the One Health approach primarily focuses on health crisis related to ecological and environmental drivers and underscores the interconnectedness of health between humans, animals, plants, and the environment where they inhabit. It holds that to achieve ultimate human health, animals, plants, and environmental health needs to be addressed as well. Health threats shared by people, animals and the environment including zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food safety and food security, vector-borne diseases, and environmental contamination are all common One Health issues [3].

Example of One Health – Antimicrobial Resistance

One example of applying the One Health approach in combating global health crisis is addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In order to protect humans, livestock and agricultural production from bacterial infection, drugs containing antibiotics and antimicrobial agents have been widely used across the world. However, the pervading use of antimicrobial drugs has given rise to the microorganisms’ capability to adapt to those drugs. Consequently, the antimicrobial-resistant bacteria continue to harm human and animal health. What is worse, the antibiotics provide opportunities for zoonotic bacteria to develop resistance genes while transmitting to human bodies via food sources (e.g. meat products), direct animal contact, and contaminated environmental sources [4]. Facing the rapidly increasing threat posed by AMR, transdisciplinary collaboration and intersectoral countermeasures must come into force, such as the One Health approach.

Following this transdisciplinary approach, several organizations raise awareness of AMR. For instance, the World Health Organization developed the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), which drives local, national, and regional action. Laying the main focus on the collection, analysing and sharing of AMR data on global level, decision making on different levels should get enhanced [4,5].

According to the latest report, 109 countries and territories worldwide have enrolled in the Surveillance System until May 2021. The Assessment shows that GLASS significantly helped to foster the development of national AMR surveillance systems. As next steps it is aimed to enhance the completeness and quality of data [6].

Outlook

Most likely the Covid-19 pandemic has not been the last zoonotic disease posing a threat to humans. Close collaboration of different domains will be a key contribution for solving and preventing further crisis. The One Health Approach seems therefore a good possibility to tackle health related challenges in the future. Especially the holistic approach entails many opportunities for solutions on the global, national and local level. However more applicable frameworks should be provided, in order to enable a better implementation by different stakeholders with varied interests and interpretations of the One Health approach. Effective performance of One Health initiatives at all levels could hardly be achieved without developing more coherent and endurable frameworks for the increasingly diversified practitioners.

References

[1] Zowalaty, M. E., & Järhult, J. D. (2020). From SARS to COVID-19: A previously unknown SARS- related coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) of pandemic potential infecting humans – Call for a One Health approach. One Health, 9, 100124. doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100124

[2] Destoumieux-Garzón, D., Mavingui P, Boetsch G, Boissier J, Darriet F, Duboz P, Fritsch C, Giraudoux P, Le Roux F, Morand S, Paillard C, Pontier D, Sueur C and Voituron Y (2018). The One Health Concept: 10 Years Old and a Long Road Ahead. Front. Vet. Sci. 5:14. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2018.00014

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018). National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. One Health Basics. Last viewed 23.07.2021 from https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/index.html

[4] Schneider, M. C., Munoz-Zanzi, C., Min, K and Aldighieri, S. (2019). “One Health” From Concept to Application in the Global World. Global Public Health. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190632366.013.29

[5] WHO (2021). Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS). Last viewed 27.07.2021 from https://www.who.int/initiatives/glass

[6] Global antimicrobial resistance and use surveillance system (GLASS) report 2021. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2021. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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Exciting Time

In the spring of 2020, I did my internship at the division of “International Cooperation on Biodiversity” of the “Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety” in Bonn for twelve weeks. Three reasons that made it a very exciting and special time were:
– Germany prepared itself to takeover the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (second half of 2020);
– The draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework has been developed – which originally was planned to be adopted during the CBD COP 15 (15th “Conference of the Parties” to the “Convention on Biological Diversity”) in Kunming, China, in October, 2020, within the German EU Presidency. However, the COP 15 has been postponed to 2021 due to the corona pandemic;
– The corona pandemic has started to spread in Germany.

Corona and the Internship

At the beginning of the internship, I was mainly involved in the preparations for the CBD COP 15. However, the CBD COP 15 process was shifted because of the corona pandemic. Concerning my internship alone, the corona pandemic had disadvantages as well as advantages:
The biggest disadvantage was that I could not enter the ministry building anymore after my first weeks. Instead, I had to work from home like my colleagues did but it turned out to work surprisingly well.
The biggest advantage was that I got insight how a federal ministry is working during a crisis. Due to the crisis, I could witness how the ministry handles a totally new, dynamic situation right from the start and I was closely involved. My tasks switched from the topic “CBD COP 15” to the new topic “nature destruction and zoonoses”.

Tasks

Some of my tasks were:
– Review of comments on the latest IPCC (“Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”) Assessment Report (AR6) within the peer review process;
– Analysis of preparatory documents for the CBD COP 15 and defining and evaluating indicators;
– Contributing to the preparations of a Federal Press Conference held by the Environment Minister;
– Preparation of an interview with the Environment Minister;
– Involvement in the creation of an internal strategic discussion paper;
– Responding to citizen´s e-mails;
– Preparation of an internal expert talk and giving an internal presentation;
– Preparation of speaking notes for the Minister and Parliamentary State Secretary;
– Preparation of the participation of the Minister in an online-panel;
– Review of different working papers, amongst others, within the interdepartmental coordination.

Working as Policy Officer

I am very grateful that my unit and subdivision had confidence in me and handed tasks with high responsibilities over to me. Those sometimes challenging tasks allowed me to get deeper insights into policy and now I feel better prepared for a job position after the university.
I hold the employees of the Ministry in high esteem. They have to deal with a high workload and oftentimes must fulfil their demanding tasks, which have a high responsibility, in a little while. Those experiences were very valuable to me because I could feel the work as policy officer very closely.
In my opinion, the advantages of being a policy officer in the Ministry outweigh clearly. For example, one can participate in international conferences all over the world, one has to manage changing, challenging tasks and topics and is close to the highly topical political events. But most of all, the greatest advantage is that I had the feeling that one’s work can really help to improve the protection of nature. And that’s what is necessary to keep alive the underlying motivation for the daily work.
I appreciate very much that I was treated like a normal member of the team and am very happy that I can continue to support the Ministry together with my new very nice team of the GIZ (German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH) as student assistant.

If you are interested in an internship at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, check the latest organisation plan and application requirements (the German language is a precondition).

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