Care for Dogs Like You Care for Your Parents
The concept of One Health is a promising approach to prevent diseases. It’s pushed forward by the renowned Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel.
Our close ties with animals
Animals and humans have always shared habitats. This coexistence leads to social, cultural and economic ties but also to health risks. Globalization further exacerbates this problem. In today’s connected world, trade and movement of people bring ecosystems which were in the past completely separated closer together. More than ever, human and animal health must be considered in a holistic setting. This is what One Health approach is all about.
Global health challenges
I first heard about One Health while doing editorial work for the online course “One Health: Connecting Humans, Animals and the Environment” from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and the University of Basel. The medical and socio-cultural issues of the course immediately triggered my interest.
And so, on a hot day in July, I traveled by train to Geneva to learn more about the concept from practitioners. In collaboration with the University of Geneva, Swiss TPH was organizing a hackathon. The event brought together selected learners from two online courses to work on global health challenges such as Ebola, rabies and antimicrobial resistance.
Rabies, dogs and happiness
At the hackathon, I met Yoenten Phuentshok, a young veterinarian from Bhutan. He told me that rabies is a serious health threat in his country. Yoenten said that the Bhutanese people feed dogs because it makes them happy and so the dog population has been growing continuously. This increase has lead to more and more rabies cases reported. Scientific studies show that it is cheaper to vaccinate all dogs than to treat humans with post-exposure prophylaxis. Consequently, vets started to catch dogs to vaccinate and sterilize them. Afterwards, the dogs are released again.
This is One Health in practice.
I’m sure it’s not easy to catch all the dogs in Bhutan. Nevertheless, it seems an appropriate method to fight against and eliminate rabies. I asked Yoenten if One Health has been practiced in Bhutan for a long time. „In my country, the term One Health is quite new, but in our culture humans and animals have always been tightly knit. We believe in rebirth. Buddhists think that all animals were, in some earlier generation, your parents. Therefore, you have to care for dogs like you care for your parents,” he replied.
Rational animal
I remembered the even-tempered, brown Labrador Retriever that was lying stretched out on the floor in the compartment next to mine. This dog might have been my mother or my father a long time ago. A strange thought. It made me aware of how limited our rational ideas sometimes are.
Communication barriers
During a coffee-break between lectures, I met Esther, a veterinarian from Kenya. I asked her if One Health might be an opportunity to bring humans closer to their animal ancestors. She smiled. „One Health is at the core of veterinary work. It’s human medicine which has to adapt to One Health. Veterinarians mostly take everything they do in a One Health approach”. Like Yoenten, she illustrated her point with a rabies example: “If you find a rabid dog, you advise the people on which measures they should take to ensure human and animal health. This is already a One Health integrated approach.”
Rudolf Virchow, the founding father of cytopathology, claimed integrative approaches for medicine as early as the 19th century: “There is no demarcation between veterinary and human medicine nor should there be one.” In every-day life, communication barriers between the disciplines often hamper the collaboration. „Although veterinarians and doctors in rural areas often know each other personally, they rarely consult. For example, if a man with a dog bite is taken to a hospital, the doctor doesn’t necessarily call the vets to tell them the dog should be quarantined,” says Yoenten.
If lions could speak
On my way back to Basel, there was no Labrador Retriever gazing at me. As the beautiful landscape passed by, an aphorism of Ludwig Wittgenstein leapt into my mind: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” For Wittgenstein, language is rooted in the practices and actions of a community. Because the lion’s form of life is so different from ours, the chance to successfully communicate with it is very small.
But when it comes to medical issues, this obstacle shouldn’t be important. Rather the artificial barriers between the species that produce a negative impact on health should be removed. At the same time, the positive effect on animal and human well-being should be strengthened with state-of-the-art research. One Health seems to be a fruitful method in this regard. The fact that it can even produce an added value should further convince critics.
Online course One Health
The online course “One Health: Connecting Humans, Animals and the Environment” by Swiss TPH and the University of Basel starts on September 25, 2017. The course is public and for free. You can enroll for the course on the platform FutureLearn.
Click here for more information on the free online courses the University of Basel offers.
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