About One Health, the cobweb and the spider

e202312104

Abstract

Although he claims to be against the current, the author wishes to share his concern about the new One Health approach sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). On the one hand, it is difficult not to subscribe to a call for an integral or holistic approach to health that jointly takes into account the interrelationship between human, animal and environmental health, which requires the interdisciplinary work of, for example, environmentalists, veterinarians and others. health, as well as intersectorality in the respective public policies or the collaboration of the WHO with other international agencies. Something that, on the other hand, has always been at the origin and development of Public Health, as we will now see.

But, on the other hand (and here is his concern), he believes that a hypothesis of the interrelation process between these three elements is missing (or unknown), which means about the causes and ways of determining these human health problems, animal and environmental that they want to combat. For example, we sense that the COVID-19 pandemic or the previous Ebola epidemic that worried us had to do with the contact or consumption of wild animals and with the urban invasion and destruction of natural ecosystems, but we do not have a clear story. about what the process was like and, therefore, how the next pandemic can be avoided.