Doctor urges One Health unity

Workers in the fields of environment and health promotion should coordinate on how to better adopt the One Health approach to ensure better outcomes for Thais, a senior physician said.
Soawapak Hinjoy, director of the Disease Control Department’s Office of International Cooperation, made this suggestion on Wednesday at “The Climate and Health Regional Dialogue” forum, jointly held by Mahidol University’s Faculty of Tropical Medicine and the French embassy.
Dr Soawapak said Thailand has been working on the One Health approach since around 2007, when a rabies epidemic occurred. She said the Disease Control Department worked with various agencies to address the outbreak and contain its spread under the approach.
She said the One Health approach developed over time, and in 2014, the Thailand Coordinating Unit for One Health was established to ensure a comprehensive and integrated approach to maintaining Thais’ health based on a World Health Organization (WHO) definition.
The WHO defines One Health as an integrated and unified approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.
This approach recognises the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and wilder environments is closely linked and interdependent.
Dr Soawapak said she is concerned about the integration of the environmental and public health sectors when implementing the One Health approach. She said she would like both sectors to work together to make the implementation successful in Thailand because health and climate change are interconnected.
She said information should be shared among state agencies, which could integrate information to forecast epidemics and the spread of diseases.
“When we talk about people’s health, it is often related to diseases. When we talk about diseases, those in the environmental sector might not get involved that much as they may think it is our role as medical personnel, doctors or veterinarians to take care of it,” she said.
“What I am concerned about is that if we adopt a holistic viewpoint, we will see that climate change is the origin of health problems. So we need to change our mindset when viewing health issues in relation to the environment.”