OIE - Vademecum

While not a new concept, the OIE endorses “One Health” as a collaborative and all-encompassing approach to addressing links between animal health, public health and ecosystems globally. This collaboration should not only be limited to an international level, but should also result in changes at national levels.

Promoting a collaborative “One Health” approach at national levels will result in a deeper and sustainable political support for a more collaborative and coordinated approach to prevent high impact human and animal health diseases at the human-animal interface.

To further this approach, the OIE collaborates closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in what is known as a ‘Tripartite’ alliance. The objective of the Tripartite is to coordinate activities to address health risks at the animal-human-ecosystem interfaces, with the ultimate aim of preventing animal and public health risks emanating from zoonoses and animal diseases impacting food safety.

In 2010, a Tripartite Concept Note was jointly drafted and published by the three organisations, reaffirming their objective and responsibilities under the Tripartite partnership. Today, this partnership continues to grow, developing with it, outreach, leadership and technical expertise to bridge animal and public health sectors on priority One Health issues, including in particular zoonotic influenza, rabies, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as priority entry points to enhance collaboration between human health and animal health services at national level.

The Tripartite has furthermore strong and direct relationships with national ministries responsible for animal and public health, through which it advocates for the implementation of and alignment with intergovernmental standards, regulations, guidelines, and recommendations to be enhanced and further promoted.

In recent efforts to identify synergies and gaps in national health governance, and with reference to assessment and mission findings of the International Health Regulations (IHR) Monitoring Framework of the WHO and the Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) Pathway of the OIE, two WHO-OIE joint national workshops were organised in 2014 in Azerbaijan and Thailand. These workshops were centered on country perspectives on IHR/PVS assessments and roadmap for better intersectoral collaboration among animal and human health sectors, which respectively aimed to strengthen health security.

The WHO and OIE have moreover drafted an Operational framework for Good governance at the human-animal interface: Bridging WHO and OIE Tools for the assessment of national capacities. This guide provides a comprehensive and synergetic overview of the WHO IHR Framework and the OIE PVS Pathway, and should be used by Member Countries to develop a coherent system of national health governance at the human-animal interface.