One health: a perspective from the human health sector

Despite emerging consensus on its use by multiple stakeholders, the human health sector has continued to identify One Health from a strong human health security perspective, often ignoring concerns of other sectors that relate to trade, commerce, livelihood issues and sustainable development. In the absence of a clear vision of One Health goals, a culture of collaboration, conceptual clarity and operating frameworks, this disconnect between human health and One Health efforts has often impeded the translation of One Health from concept to reality beyond emergency situations. Effective and sustainable One Health partnerships will require identification of clear operating principles that allow flexible approaches for inter-sectoral collaborations. Trans-sectoral methods for measuring the risks, burden and costs across sectors and examples of best practices models backed by the catalytic role of informal collaborations are needed to convince the political and technical leaderships, instill societal wellbeing into the human health sector’s view of One Health and make necessary structural adjustments.