One Health – A holistic solution for sustainable management of globalization-driven public health challenges

Abstract

Globalization is an inevitable and extremely complex phenomenon that involves transnational integration of culture, economy, environment, politics, and other social interest. Globally, we are witnessing multitude changes such as a rapid population growth, urbanization, international trade and commerce, agricultural intensification, and encroachment into the natural ecosystem. Further mismatching of food demand and supply, growth disparities, increasing food prices, and over utilization of natural resources are among the challenges to the economic status of a nation and its health sector. The health impacts of globalization can be both positive and negative; of course, its impacts vary based on factors such as geographical location, gender, age, literacy, and socioeconomic status. Globalization has played pivotal role in health improvements via dissemination of new medical knowledge, low-cost health technologies, fast transactions of medical supply and improvement of human rights. Thus it has shown potential positive impacts by minimizing the gaps in health inequalities between rich and poor people in the global South and North and improved the idea of healthcare for all. On the other hand, there are also shortcomings of globalization to global health, such as the spread of infectious diseases due to rapid mobility, which is emerging as the greatest threat to all. The interconnectedness of globalization and One Health is complex. Whereas, globalization is one of the main challenges to ensure global health security. One Health is a remedy to manage the negative health consequences of globalization, especially in least developed world. It is undeniable that the connection between humans, animals, and the environment calls for the attention of multi-sectorial institutes to collaborate to closely monitor and reduce the risks and consequences on health and wellbeing. One Health approach is increasingly recognized and streamlined into national and international plans and strategies for effective management of zoonotic diseases, food safety, antimicrobial resistance, and climate change. Human practices such as, changes in land use and how food is produced are driving ecological and evolutionary conditions that facilitate disease spillover events and contribute to antimicrobial resistance. These changes are occurring rapidly on a large scale, both locally and globally. The pursuit of understanding human, veterinary and environmental health issues separately leads to an incomplete understanding of disease dynamics and, therefore, missed synergy for a joint mitigation of the problems. One Health actions support the primary prevention of such problems, enabling more timely and effective containment and response to public health threats at the human-animal-environment interface. In short, systematic and sustained One Health approach becomes more important than ever in order to promote and ensure health security and avert the negative impacts of globalization. Therefore, there is a need to focus on the creation of socially and environmentally sustainable forms of globalization that provide the greatest benefits and least costs, shared more equitably than the status queue.