PROJECT SPOTLIGHT: The Importance of Our Wildlife Health Programme

Our Clinical Projects in One Health play an important role in collecting data to inform conservation strategies locally, regionally, and nationally. If you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen some of the work involved: from microscopic imagery showing blood samples and parasites, to zebra photo surveys. But what is One Health and how does it aid conservation?

One Health is a trans-disciplinary concept. It is defined as “the integrative effort of multiple disciplines working together to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment.” Significant knowledge gaps exist on wildlife health in Malawi, so we apply a One Health approach by incorporating multiple species, demographics, paradigms, and scales of life in our research to solve health-related problems in a holistic and inclusive manner.

Our programme, Clinical Projects in One Health, leads clinical interventions, passive disease surveillance, and several targeted research projects in and around Malawi’s protected wildlife areas. People and animals live in close proximity in Malawi due to widespread reliance on domestic livestock, high human population density, and increasing settlement and soil cultivation adjacent to protected conservation areas. These factors all increase the risk of disease emergence for people, wildlife, and domestic animals. Through the collection of data, we are trying to achieve a better understanding of health and disease at the human-domestic-wildlife interface.

Read more about the projects that fall under this programme and find out how you can get involved here.