One health is an increasingly popular sort of idea within medical and vet circles. Perhaps this is a little bit more on the radar of the vets, but I don’t really know the doctor’s side of it that well. So, I may be saying out of bounds there.
But, the core premise of one health is that human health and animal health are intrinsically linked, in quite a lot of ways. Very, very broad definition. So, people think of the obvious, you know, are people catching diseases from animals and things like that? Yeah, that’s obviously part of it. That’s an obvious concern. But, there’s even things like, for example, dog ownership is shown to have health benefits.
So, there’s one health case where the interaction between humans and animals is having a health benefit on either. Or I suppose that is the kind of welfare, a welfare very vet’s word to use – but there is the well-being perhaps of the more humanised, but implications on a human one, for example, that animals are ill.
So, if there’s a big outbreak of disease in dogs, the most recent one I can think of that was really relevant in the UK would be Alabama Rot. That was at the time here, a new and emerging disease. It was fatal and a lot of people were very upset, and just very worried that their dogs would get sick with this condition.
So yeah, one health is all about the different places that human and animal health interact, and it’s really, really broad.
