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Topic: A High-level Expert Panel ‘One Health’ of WHO

Why in News?

• The World Health Organization (WHO) has formed a high-level expert panel ‘One Health’ to study the emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases like H5N1, avian influenza, MERS, Ebola, Zika and possibly the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Key Highlights

• The panel will advise global agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on how future outbreaks, especially due to zoonotic diseases, can be averted.
• It will also develop a surveillance framework and global action plan for the same.
• The experts will also closely study various human activities which disturb the natural wildlife and environment.
• Activities like food production and distribution and urbanisation cause biodiversity loss and climate change.
• This damage, along with the increased pressure over natural resources, is a suspected reason behind the rapid emergence of various zoonotic diseases.

What are Zoonotic Disease?

• A zoonosis (zoonotic disease) is an infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans (or from humans to animals).
• Zoonotic diseases are caused by harmful germs like viruses, bacterial, parasites, and fungi.
• According to the experts, three of every four infectious diseases are caused by zoonosis. Scientists across the world suspect COVID-19 is also a zoonosis.

'One Health' Approach

• 'One Health' is an approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes.
• The areas of work in which a One Health approach is particularly relevant include food safety, the control of zoonoses (diseases that can spread between animals and humans, such as flu, rabies and Rift Valley Fever), and combatting antibiotic resistance (when bacteria change after being exposed to antibiotics and become more difficult to treat).