CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

World Water Day 2017 – Why Waste Water?

World Water Day is an annual event that takes place on 22^nd March.  It is a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater, as well as emphasising the need for sustainable management of global water resources.  Each year, World Water Day highlights a different aspect of freshwater, and the theme chosen for 2017, is “wastewater”, in support of Sustainable Development Goal 6.3, to improve water quality and reduce, treat and reuse wastewater.  This article, written by CABI’s Global Health and Environmental Science Editors, Wendie Norris and Stephanie Cole, examines the importance of wastewater treatment in terms of resource recovery and environmental preservation, as well as its role in protecting human health.

Indigenous knowledge to enlighten sustainable development

Indigenous peoples are characterised by having their own land to which they are connected at various levels, and protecting this special relationship has attracted a great deal of media attention recently. Demonstrations have resumed demanding a stop to the construction of Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines for oil transportation as campaigners and experts say these pipelines would threaten Native American reservations yet create only a few dozen permanent jobs. These conflicts reflect deeper issues than sheer disagreements about economic interests and land ownership – they reveal two fundamentally different approaches to relating with nature. Below, I explain how viewing the planet as a supplier of resources or as a provider of nurturance may even determine our success in living sustainably as a global community.

Cancer, burnt toast and roast potatoes

 

I should think the entire western world is now afraid to eat their roast potatoes.  This comes after the international media coverage  of the UK Food Standards Agency’s new campaign “"Go for Gold” , [@CABI_Health 23^rd Jan ], which hopes to encourage us (UK) to reduce acrylamide in our diet by cooking starchy foods to a pale golden colour and no further.

Speaking as someone who spent nearly 20 years in labs handling acrylamide on a daily basis (for analysing proteins), I can’t say I am too worried about the acrylamide content of my Sunday lunch roast potatoes  and burning my toast.

But what about the general public? Should they be nervous…so what is behind the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) campaign?

It’s their recently published Total diet study of inorganic contaminants, acrylamide & mycotoxins (TDS-2014), covering years 2014 and 2015 for the UK, and how the results fit with European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) recommendations.

A total diet study differs from other food surveys in that foods are firstly prepared and cooked for consumption. The aim of TDS-2014 was to estimate dietary exposure to contaminants for population age groups: it assessed 138 food categories, and for each category pooled food items collected from 24 UK towns.

Universal health coverage gains momentum in 2016

WHO definition: Universal Health Coverage (UHC) means everyone can access the quality health services they need without financial hardship.

This year it seems that organisations, governments and citizens everywhere are answering the call to UHC, whose annual awareness day is December 12th.

From this year forward, UHC is seen as central to improving health systems, improving economies, and ensuring global health security. The G7 group countries, the primary source of funding for Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC), met in Ise-Shima Japan 2016 and made UHC their umbrella concept. Through this, they seek to improve health systems and global health security.  Of the 17 SDGs agreed by the United Nations, just one is directly health-related but it is “achieving UHC”.

Judith Rodin, (President Rockefeller Foundation, has observed that “25 of the wealthiest nations all have some form of universal coverage, as do some middle-income countries including Brazil, Mexico and Thailand and lower-income nations, such as Ghana, the Philippines, Rwanda and Viet Nam, are working towards achieving UHC.”

Rather than talk about why we need UHC, I thought I’d talk  about what is actually proposed by middle-income and lower-income countries (LMIC) to fulfil UHC and what the NGOs, donors and global health community championing UHC would like it to encompass.

What is UHC?

UHC systems vary from country to country: there is no one size fits all.  It very much depends on the minimum health outcomes a government wants to achieve and how much of its GDP it is prepared to spend. The main variables being the level of care delivered, who delivers it, who receives it and how it is funded. 

UHC of itself does not mean universal access to health services nor care for all diseases. It’s about providing a basic level of health services (“Essential Packages of Health Services”) to as much of the population as possible.

The first UHC system was the UK’s National Health Service set up in 1948.

The USA has a non-universal system of health coverage.

What do LMIC see it as?

Over time,  as far as I can see, these basics for a cost-effective UHC have emerged:

• government regulation, legislation and taxation
• primary health care
• vaccination programmes for children (for LMIC this is organised through GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance)
• maternal healthcare (pregnancy)
• health insurance to finance (public tax, private insurance or a mix of both)
• financial protection: pooled funds to reduce out of pocket payments amongst the poorest and vulnerable  

Much of the information that now follows is derived from  the RSTMH 2016 Chadwick memorial lecture "Neglected Tropical Diseases in the Time of Blue Marble Health and the Anthropocene Epoch", given by  Professor Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas and President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute. 

 

One Health: free online course from FutureLearn features CABI authors

One Health is about connectedness: "the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, plants and our environment”.

On One Health Day, November 3^rd 2016, CABI's editors held a One Health (#OneHealth) Blogathon to focus attention, contributing a total of 6 blogs to Handpicked... and Carefully Sorted, each written from the viewpoint of a different sector.   Our Plantwise Blog contributed One Health: Plantwise’s ambition to improve the health of people, plants and animals.

We hope you found them informative but your learning need not be confined to our blogs!

Sign up to a free online One Health course from FutureLearn: starts November 7th 2016, runs for 6 weeks. Lecturers are the CABI authors Esther Schelling,  Jakob Zinsstag and Bassirou Bonfoh of Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute.

Esther, Jakob  and Bassirou are all authors of chapters in CABI’s  book One Health: The Theory and Practice of Integrated Health Approaches [2015].  Indeed Esther and Jakob are also co-editors.

FutureLearn  courses are easy to follow and well-paced: you get one unit per week.  I speak from experience as because of my interest in evidence-based medicine, in October 2015, I took "Informed Health Consumer: Making Sense of Evidence". 

I hope you can make use of this One Health course.

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How soil health is integral to One Health

One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health (#OneHealth) Day on November 3^rd 2016

 "It is difficult to rate the importance of the different soil functions, since all are vital to our well-being to some extent. However, the function of supporting food and agriculture worldwide is fundamental for the preservation and advancement of human life on this planet." - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States (FAO).

 

The multiple roles of soil often go unnoticed. During time spent carrying out research for this blog I came across the following quote which I feel really captures the relevance of soil health for the One Health concept:

‘The health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible’.

This was actually said seven decades ago by Lady Eva Balfour, one of the first women to study agriculture at an English University, who went on to found the Soil Association in 1946. Yet it seems that on many levels we are still to realise the connectedness between health in soils, plants, animals and people.

Urban trees – an air pollution solution?

Image: Unsplash, Pixabay.com

One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health Day - November 3rd 2016

November 3^rd 2016 will be host to the first ever One Health Day, an international campaign that aims to bring attention to how planetary health challenges are addressed.  It may not be obvious, but public health and the environment are inextricably interlinked.  The physical environment, which includes housing, sanitation, drinking water and air, has significant effects on human health and well-being.  Therefore, effective management of the environment is important, so that potential health issues can be avoided.  With this in mind, the focus of this blog is urban air pollution, its impact on health, and how trees could help improve the air quality in towns and cities.

‘One Welfare’ complements ‘One Health’

Image: Leroy Skalstad, Pixabay.com

One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health Day on November 3rd 2016

While ‘One Health’ is a well-established concept, a new term ‘One Welfare’ is also emerging, extending the One Health theme beyond physical health and recognising that animal welfare and human wellbeing are intrinsically connected. In an article in the Veterinary Record, Rebeca García Pinillos and other One Welfare advocates introduce this concept for debate, with an aim to “improve animal welfare and human wellbeing worldwide.”

A One Welfare approach will help to empower the animal welfare field to address the connections between science and policy more effectively in various areas of human society, including environmental science and sustainability, the authors say. “It could also help promote key global objectives such as supporting food security, reducing human suffering (e.g., abuse of vulnerable people) and improving productivity within the farming sector through a better understanding of the value of high welfare standards.”

While One Health initiatives have tended to focus on threats to human and animal health, particularly zoonoses, there is a growing body of research into the mental and physical health benefits of the human-animal bond. In addition, because poor animal welfare can often act as an indicator of poor human welfare (and vice versa), there is a need to understand the psychosocial impacts of human-animal interactions.

One Health working will improve health and well-being of us all: plant, animal, human and ecosystem!

  
    Pastoralists, Mongolia. Image courtesy of Esther Schelling, Swiss TPH.

 One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health Day on November 3^rd 2016
 
It's always nice to meet up with a CABI author at a conference especially when they are giving a talk around a theme dear to CABI‘s heart,  namely “One Health”: the concept of working across the interface of animal, plant, human  and environment  to achieve health  & development  which is sustainable and fair. CABI has been gathering, managing and generating research information across all these sectors since 1912.  We know “its all connected”.

The conference was the RSTMH biennial meeting [Cambridge UK, Sept 12-16^th, 2016], and the author in question, Esther Schelling, co-editor  of CABI’s  book One Health: The Theory and Practice of Integrated Health Approaches [2015].    To read a  free e-chapter, use this link.

In One Health beyond early detection and control of zoonoses Esther talked about her long-time project with nomadic pastoralists in Chad and a rift valley fever (RVF) control project in Kenya.  She drew attention to the need for:

• more interdisciplinary studies to include an evaluation of One Health working
• involvement of social scientists
• engagement of key stakeholders

And tellingly she provided a cost-benefit analysis to society of controlling zoonoses when the disease is in its animal host before it infects human beings. 

Those cost-benefit analyses made a deep impression on the delegates, many of whom were involved in zoonotic neglected tropical diseases. Perhaps for the first time they were appreciating the added benefits and synergies that a transdisciplinary approach between science, society, humanities and medicine could bring.

Excessive use of antimicrobials in intensive livestock farming as One Health issue

One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health Day November 3rd 2016

Most antibiotics in livestock farming are used in aquaculture, but significant amounts are also used in terrestrial livestock species, particularly in poultry and pigs.

Most antibiotics in intensive livestock farming are used for non-therapeutic purposes

Approximately 70% of antibiotics are used for non- therapeutic purposes, i.e. many antibiotics are used in sub- therapeutic doses and over prolonged periods, which leads to the development of genes that confer antimicrobial resistance to animal pathogens. These genes can subsequently be transferred to human pathogens and it is estimated that 75% of recently emerging diseases in humans are of animal origin.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) problems are further exacerbated by the fact that antibiotic resistance genes were found in bacteria long before antibiotics were ever used on super-pathogens in farm animals.

AMR is a worldwide problem, which clearly affects both animal and human health, and hence it is truly One Health issue.