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| A sick sea turtle. How is a One Health approach to this animal different? |
SAT HQ has relocated to
beautiful Darwin, for the 10th Anniversary AMRRIC (Animal Managementin Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities) conference. I’ve been fortunate
enough to be involved with AMRRIC since its inception, and attended the
conference of its precursor, Big Lick, up in Darwin in (gulp) 2000. Fourteen
years ago!
Another delegate who was
around back then is Rick Speare, whose title should be “Emeritus Professor Dr Dr Dr Dr Rick Speare”,
as he has degrees in veterinary science, medicine, a PhD and a Doctor of
Veterinary Science in amphibian medicine.
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| The same turtle. Note the scales are peeling away. |
He gave a stirring talk yesterday
about the concept of One Health – we use the term but not everyone responds to
it in the same way. It is accepted at the highest levels and written into
policy, but people on the ground have mixed feelings about it. Some of us think
we’re doing it anyway, some think it just applies to the topic of zoonotic
disease, and some think it means human health should be number one.
Professor (if I may be so bold as
to abbreviate) Speare looked at different models of One Health and suggested
that in some ways it is limiting. He also discussed some of the differences
between veterinary patients and those of human doctors and made some
interesting points. For example in veterinary medicine quality of life is more
important than life itself (a bold statement but look at practice and policies
in human and animal medicine), that our patient’s lives are expendable, that
some animals exist solely for economic gain, and that we have more control over
our patients than doctors do.
Prof. Speare talked about the
need to understand what One Health looks like on the ground. There remains a
need to prove the concept, i.e. to show that an integrated approach to human,
animal and environmental health improves outcomes, for example better
prediction and control of communicable disease. He suggested that while it has
been long discussed that dog health programs in communities are a good model
for promoting public health, that assumption needs to be tested. Can such
models be built on? Do healthy dogs give communities a sense of control? What
determines the incidence of dog bites in communities?
As Prof. Speare concluded,
the term One Health is here to stay. But if we are going to use it, we need to
understand what it means, how outcomes can be measured and ultimately what “One
Health” looks like.
Today I am honoured to be
facilitating a hypothetical rabies incursion scenario in Arnhem Land, along
with Dr Malcolm Anderson (NT’s Chief Veterinary Officer), Dr Charles Douglas
(NT Health Department’s Centre for Disease Control), Dr Joe Schmidt (from the
Australian Government’s Northern Australian Quarantine Strategy) and Dr Helen
Scott-Orr (former Chief Veterinary Officer of NSW).
What would happen if a
rabies case was detected in this area? What agencies would become involved and
who would be responsible? How would the outbreak be controlled and would we
have enough resources? Stay tuned.
Meantime if you’d like to
find out more about AMRRIC, visit their site here.
