Last nights snappy One World Olympics presentation set the stage for today’s One Health announcement by the American Veterinarian Association (AVMA) and AMA:
ONE HEALTH INITIATIVE: AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION STATEMENT
Date: Fri 8 Aug 2008
Source: Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association [edited]
[Below is the Veterinary Medicine Today Special Report on the Executive summary of the American Veterinary Medical Association
(AVMA) One Health Initiative Task Force (OHITF) report published in the Journal of the AVMA (King LJ, Anderson LR, et al. Vet Med Today:
Special Report - Executive summary of the American Veterinary Medical Association One Health Initiative Task Force report JAVMA, 233(2), 15
The convergence of people, animals, and our environment has created a new dynamic in which the health of each group is inextricably interconnected. The challenges associated with this dynamic are demanding, profound, and unprecedented. While the demand for animal-based protein is expected to increase by 50 [percent] by 2020
(2), animal populations are under heightened pressure to survive, and further loss of biodiversity is highly probable.
On top of that, of the 1461 diseases now recognized in humans, approximately 60 percent are caused by multi-host pathogens characterized by their movement across species lines
(3). And, over the past 3 decades, approximately 75 percent of new emerging human infectious diseases have been zoonotic
(4). Our increasing interdependence with animals and their products may well be the single most critical risk factor to our health and well-being with regard to infectious diseases.
There is a growing concern that the world’s latest generation could be the 1st in history to experience a reduction in life expectancy and health in general. Yet, veterinary and human medicines are considered separate entities and the obvious links between them frequently ignored. According to the KPMG study “The Current and Future Market for Veterinarians and Veterinary Medicine in the United States,”
(5) Published in May 1999, “our traditional approaches and past requisite skills and levels of knowledge may not be commensurate with the rapid changes and new demands of food animal industries and the shifting requirements needed for the corporate and public opportunities of the future, including public health, biomedical research, and the global food system.”
The need for a holistic, collaborative approach — One strategy to better understand and address the contemporary health issues created by the convergence of human, animal, and environmental domains is the concept of One Health. Although the concept of One Health is not new — the theory was supported by William Osler and Rudolf Virchow, the Father of Comparative Pathology, and re-articulated in Calvin Schwabe’s Veterinary Medicine and Human Health
(6)In 1984 — our increasing interdependence with animals and their products has spurred the human medical and veterinary professions to readdress such an approach. This approach would encourage the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals, and our environment.
The Benefits of One Health
The benefits of a One Health approach include:
– improving animal and human health globally through collaboration among all the health sciences, especially between the veterinary and human medical professions, to address critical needs;
– meeting new global challenges head-on through collaboration among multiple professions — veterinary medicine, human medicine, environmental health, wildlife health, and public health;
– developing centers of excellence for education and training in specific areas through enhanced collaboration among colleges and schools of veterinary medicine, human medicine, and public health;
– increasing professional opportunities for veterinarians – adding to our scientific knowledge to create innovative programs to improve health.
The One Health Initiative Task Force
On 14 Apr 2007, the AVMA Executive Board took official action to establish a One Health Initiative by approving a recommendation by
then-president Dr Roger K Mahr to establish an OHITF. The purpose of the task force was to study the feasibility of a campaign to
facilitate collaboration and cooperation among health science professions, academic institutions, governmental agencies, and industries to help with the assessment, treatment, and prevention of
cross-species disease transmission and mutually prevalent, but non-transmitted, human and animal diseases, and medical conditions.
The OHITF, comprising 13 visionary individuals and communicators, was charged by the AVMA Executive Board with the task of defining “One Health,” and providing recommendations and strategic actions that would support and expand the concept across the health professions. Just 2 months later, the AMA [American Medical Association] House of Delegates followed suit, with unanimous approval of a resolution in support of One Health.
Partnership is critical to success
The veterinary profession must implement solutions to the critical workforce challenges in collaboration with multiple professions, including public health, human medicine, bio-engineering, animal science, environmental science, and wildlife. By working together, more can be accomplished to improve health worldwide, and the veterinary medical profession has the responsibility to assume a major leadership role in that effort. One Health calls for the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, and our environment.
OHITF recommendations
The following recommendations, which are not listed in order of priority, were based on the findings of the OHITF both during their meetings, and in the follow-up sessions held by the working groups. While the AVMA and the AMA plan to take a leadership role in this effort, the success of these recommendations will depend heavily on the collaboration of various health science professions, academic institutions, governmental agencies, and private industries.
– create and fund a One Health Joint Steering Committee to begin the execution of the other recommendations and associated actions;
– complete a One Health Proposal for Donors as well as a Business Plan and continue the process of engaging potential donors and sponsors;
– create and implement initial components of a One Health Communication Effort;
– engage an all-inclusive communications firm to develop and implement a communications plan and coordinate ongoing media relations, public relations, publicity, marketing, and advertising.
– plan a study on One Health to be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences and secure the necessary funding to underwrite this effort;
– develop, charter, and form a National One Health Commission (to replace the steering committee) and recruit full-time staff in key positions to support the goals and mission of the commission and complete the recommendations within the full report;
– appoint a national/global One Health Advisory Team to help support the National One Health Commission and give it direction, counsel, and wisdom;
– plan and hold a One Health National Summit;
– convene several panels and a national meeting to establish a national research agenda for One Health;
– work toward the inclusion of key One Health outcomes for listing in the strategies for Healthy People 2020 and Healthy Animals 2010;
- inform, engage, and solicit the support of medical, veterinary medical, and public health students and their respective organizations;
– create a guiding coalition of liaisons, champions, and key supporters to promote the One Health concept.
Call to action
We now stand at the precipice of health care transformation where disease prevention and health promotion in people, animals, and our environment have become a critical strategic need. The most pressing need for a transformation of this magnitude is almost always vision and leadership. The OHITF recommendations can serve as an action plan to guide individuals and professions during the process of change. But, while the AVMA and AMA are eager and willing to take the lead on this effort, we cannot succeed without the support of others. Decisions made today impact events of tomorrow. We live in a world in which the difference between what can be imagined and what can be accomplished has never been smaller. Veterinary medicine is in a
unique position. Veterinarians are well grounded in population health, comparative medicine, and preventive medicine. The profession has the potential to help lead the efforts of One Health. However, this is not a given, and a reluctance by our profession or by the other health sciences to take this step will, without question, be a lost opportunity that will be picked up by other groups.
The responsibility sits clearly on our shoulders. The human medical profession is faced with the same dilemma — it also must decide on its future role in One Health. Every profession has its defining moments — special points in time when talented individuals work cooperatively to influence the course of events for generations to come. For veterinary medicine and the other health sciences, that time is now.
Our recommendations will only be fulfilled if action is taken, resources identified and committed, and leadership supported. We urge you to join us in supporting the One Health Initiative.
According to the most recent One Health newsletter: “The “One Health” e-mail distribution list now totals 472 individuals in 23 countries including:
United States, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Germany, India, Israel, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Switzerland.
The Supporter List totals 317.
Aguacaliente, Mexico…hot water, Mexico. The harmonization of American farming by the NAU/SPP tanks agricultural into hot water and catapults your food high prices and mass shortages.
SPP/NAU Rural Development Working Group
Highlights include:
Signed May 13, 2008 on the dotted line
<Honorable> Terry Peach from State Secretary of Agriculture of Oklahoma signed as the Representative for the United States
Annalisa Baer-Senior Manager of Public Relations, Alberta, Canada
Maria Del Carmen Trejo Rodriguez, Secretary of Rural Development, Michochan, Mexico
Contact these <representatives> and inform them you oppose the NAU/SPP/Deep Integration
Scientists Oversee Creation Of DNA ‘Barcodes’ Database Of Earth’s 1.8 Million Known Species
WASHINGTON, Sep. 16, 2007
(AP) To help shoppers avoid mislabeled toxic pufferfish and pilots steer clear of birds, federal agencies are starting to tap into an ambitious project that is gathering DNA “barcodes” for the Earth’s 1.8 million known species.
A consortium of scientists from almost 50 nations is overseeing the building of a global database made from tiny pieces of genetic material. Called DNA barcoding, the process takes a scientist only a few hours in a lab and about $2 to identify a species from a tissue sample or other piece of genetic material.
David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said the purpose is to create a global reference library _ “a kind of telephone directory for all species.”
“If I know that gene sequence, I can submit it as a query to a database and get back the telephone number,” he said. “I can get back the species name.”
The government’s interest in the project stems from a variety of possible uses.
The Food and Drug Administration has begun eyeing it as a tool to ferret out hazardous fish species and to confirm a type of leech used in some surgery. In May, the FDA used it to warn that a shipment labeled monkfish from China might actually be a type of pufferfish that could contain a deadly toxin if not prepared properly.
The Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force hope it will help them identify birds prone to collide with aircraft. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sees it as a means to track commercial fish and reduce killing of unwanted species also caught by nets.
A growing collection of feathers and other remains of birds that collided with planes has provided “operational” information for the FAA, said Scott Miller, a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution who chairs the consortium’s executive committee.
“They have an almost complete reference database for the North American bird species,” Miller said. “It is a routine tool that they use.”
Elsewhere, the Environmental Protection Agency is testing species barcoding to identify insects and other invertebrates that indicate how healthy rivers and streams are. The Agriculture Department is contributing genetic data it has compiled on fruit flies in an effort help farmers control pests.
Among the agencies experimenting with the database, EPA has found that as it grows in size it is becoming “more and more useful as a practical tool for identifying species,” EPA spokeswoman Jessica Emond said.
Scientists call it barcodes to compare it to the supermarket scanner codes that are indecipherable except to machines. But with plants and animals, the scanners look at the specific order of the four basic building blocks of DNA to identify the species.
Users gain free access to a repository of archival genetic material run jointly by U.S., European and Japanese facilities.
About 30,000 species have been logged in the database so far, but scientists hope to reach 500,000 within five years. A two-year goal is to have sequenced 2,800 _ or about 80 percent _ of the 3,500 different species of mosquitoes.
Yvonne-Marie Linton of the Natural History Museum in London, said efforts to reduce mosquito populations blamed for up to 500 million human malaria cases and 1 million annual deaths each year are consistently hindered by misidentifying the species responsible.
Linton, who heads a project to barcode the mosquito species, said correctly identifying and controlling those carriers of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever and the West Nile virus are the “key to disease management.”
Miller said barcoding is “basically going to revolutionize the way that mosquito survey and monitoring is done.”
The consortium is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. It grew out of 2003 research paper in which geneticist Paul Hebert athe University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, proposed a database of DNA barcodes for identifying all species. Now, the Smithsonian and university share in the barcoding work.
From the trenches,
Celeste
TAIPEI (UPI) — Scientists from around the world are meeting in Taiwan to discuss using DNA barcodes to identify and distinguish biological species.
The Second International Barcode of Life Conference, running through Friday, involves a worldwide effort to revolutionize the identification of species by using DNA barcoding.
Similar to the barcodes that identify items at a grocery store, a DNA barcode has potential applications in food safety, disease prevention and better environmental monitoring. There are more than 280,000 DNA barcode records representing about 31,000 species.
“DNA barcoding is emerging as a global standard for identifying species in basic taxonomic research, biodiversity studies and in government regulation,” said David Schindel, executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, an organization based at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Each of the world’s estimated 1.8 million species is genetically unique. DNA barcoding rapidly sequences the DNA from a single, standardized gene on the DNA molecule, officials said. The technique can quickly identify species from larval forms or tissue samples that can sometimes be nearly impossible to identify through traditional methods.
From the trenches,
Celeste
The following are some of the title of the posts referenced yesterday. Copy the link you want and use the search tool at the top of our sight on the right.
Posted in September 1st, 2007
Posted in September 18th, 2007
Posted in August 12th, 2007
Posted in August 11th, 2007
Posted in August 11th, 2007
Posted in August 11th, 2007
Posted in September 1st, 2007
Posted in September 1st, 2007
These represent just a few on the topic. I will be posting more soon. If you have questions you can post a comment or email: elisheva@w-link.net. Thank you for listening to Steve’s show and prepare.
From the trenches,
Celeste
Surveillance and Response System Report
This report comes to you from 13 coordinating agencies including the military. They formed a partnership to ‘fight emerging infections’. This report is for you if you want to know strategy, statistics, plans, and the militarization of health care. What is the miliary doing in health care anyhow?
DOD-Pandemic Influenza-Annual Report
From the trenches,
Celeste
Jennifer Nuzzo, September 14, 2007
On September 10, 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a review of federal pandemic influenza preparedness activities entitled Influenza Pandemic: Further Efforts are Needed to Ensure Clearer Federal Leadership Roles and an Effective National Strategy.1 The report, dated August 14, 2007, was completed by bipartisan Congressional (House) request.
According to the document, the objectives of the review were “to address the extent to which (1) federal leadership roles and responsibilities for preparing and responding to a pandemic are clearly defined and documented and (2) the [National] Strategy [for Pandemic Influenza] and the [Implementation] Plan [for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza] address the characteristics of an effective national strategy.â€
In its review, the GAO analyzed the federal government’s pandemic plans, interviewed officials from the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), Agriculture (USDA), Defense (DOD), Transportation (DOT), and State as well as the Vice Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard “who has been predesignated as the national Principal Federal Official for pandemic influenza.†The GAO also assessed the Strategy and Plan to determine how well they jointly addressed the following “six desirable characteristics of an effective national strategyâ€:
The GAO review found that while the actions the administration has taken in preparing for an influenza pandemic “have been significant, considerably more work needs to be done.†In particular, “federal government leaderships roles and responsibilities for preparing for and responding to a pandemic continue to evolve and will require further clarification and testing before the relationships of many leadership positions are well-understood.†The GAO report points out that key federal pandemic planning documents “do not specify how the leadership roles and responsibilities would work†to address the likely pervasive and protracted effects of a pandemic. Specifically, “it is not clear how, in a pandemic, the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security would share leadership responsibilities in practice.â€
The GAO also found that while federal preparedness plans adequately “address one of the desirable characteristics of an effective national strategyâ€â€” problem definition and risk assessment of a pandemic (#2)—the plans only partially address four of the characteristics (#1, 3, 5, 6). Furthermore, federal preparedness plans do not address the “financial resources and investments needed to implement the actions called for [in the plans]†(characteristic #4).
The GAO concluded that federal pandemic preparedness efforts may be enhanced if the following conditions are met:
Reference
The UK has prepared a document on managing death including carcass and corpse disposal. The UK and joined the US in creating plans to manage death.
From the trenches,
Celeste