Bruce Kaplan

'ONE HEALTH' and Parasitology

Address: 14748 Hamlets Grove Drive, Sarasota, Florida 34235, USA, 2Program on Science and Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 221 Nassau Street, 2nd floor, Princeton, New Jersey 08542, USA, 3Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Pandemic & Biodefense Fund, 21 Finn Road, Harvard MA 01451, USA and 4Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Institute of Medical Biochemistry, Center for Health Sciences, Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Preventing and controlling zoonotic tuberculosis: a One Health approach.

The expression One Health refers to the unified human and veterinary approach to zoonoses, an approach that used to be identified with Medicine throughout the 20th Century. Zoonotic tuberculosis (TB), a disease due to bacteria of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, is a recognized global public veterinary health problem. The significance of the health and economic threats posed by zoonotic TB has been recognized by several global health agencies, which have called for control and eradication programs for zoonotic TB. The interplay between humans, livestock, wildlife, and ecology in the epidemiology of zoonotic TB make arduous the control of the disease, as such zoonotic TB is the ideal target for the application of the One Health approach. This article argues that a successful One Health response to TB will consider the effects of disease on socio-economic well-being, and allow for addressing the social, cultural and economic conditions that facilitate spread and maintenance of this disease. The One Health approach will also enable the development of disease control programs involving both animal and human populations, fostering the participation of various stakeholders. One Health approach will also allow for expanding scientific knowledge, improve medical education and clinical care, and develop effective disease control programs for both human and animal populations.

A manifesto for planetary health

www.thelancet.com Vol 383 April 26, 2014 1459 Richard Horton and colleagues’ manifesto is in the tradition of The Lancet’s founding Editor Thomas Wakley. It champions social medicine, as does The Lancet’s current Editor. We—as members of the People’s Health Movement also aiming to strengthen community and planetary health informed by public health principles—agree with and endorse the general analysis of The Lancet’s manifesto. However, the manifesto makes no mention of existing social movements, many of which have much the same aims as those being proposed, including: exposing political and economic systems that jeopardise public health, emphasising the provision of universal primary health care, insisting that public health institutions and facilities be protected, empowering the people most immediately aff ected and defending their rights, calling for renewed social values and a vision that puts the public interest fi rst, and pressing governments to protect public goods. For more than a decade, the disorder created by reckless capitalism has been authoritatively discredited, including by existing social movements. Nevertheless, sustainable development initiatives designed especially for Asia and Africa still almost invariably involve the private sector, as lead partners of UN agencies and governments. But, in reality, the private sector comprises the very transnational corporations whose actions are in conflict with public health. They must be excluded from policy formulations to improve public health. Instead, partnerships need to include genuinely independent public interest civil society organisations and social movements. The manifesto calls for the creation of a powerful social movement to deliver planetary health and support sustainable human development. But, there is no reference to the work already being done for example by the World Social Forum, Greenpeace, the International Baby A manifesto for planetary health

Confronting Emerging Zoonoses

Modern human infectious diseases are thought to have originated in domestic animals during the Neolithic period or afterwards. However, recent genetic, phylogeographic and molecular clock analyses of microbial genomes point to a much older Paleolithic origin (2.5 million to 10,000 years ago) and suggest that many of these pathogens coevolved with ancestral hominids in Africa. Another group of human pathogens seems to have derived recently from non-human hominids.