One Health and the changing global health landscape - The neglected heartbeat

Thanks for your great query. Attaining justice in health is a complex issue that is not straight forward but requires addressing from multiple levels and scales. Everyone all the way from the local levels to the the global levels require to be acorded opportunities to access health services. Innovative strategies that are appropriate and relevant to the different categories of people in the community. some of the strategies include working through and with existing local structures, highlighting the barriers that hinder social justice so that policies and interventions take cognisance of these factors and deliberately engrain aspects of social justice and the rights of everyone to health; Empowering communities to have more control over their health and in decison making among others we can discuss further one on one

Initially at the beginning of the outbreak there was no provision but as the outbreak advanced, the government organised and distributed food support to the community

Yes we have been working closely with researchers from the Kenya Wildlife Services in relation to various infectious diseases that have close connections across domestic and wildlife. But there is need to increase such kind of intergrated studies

Thank you.I have been part of a project that has been looking at gender and livestock vaccines. Some of the transformative methods entails working with male champions and allies within research, policy and practitice, Bringing together different communities of practice who work in the community and inducting them into gender transformative practices as they work in the community, holding continous dialogues with communities using methods like role plays, drama, music, art; being deliberate about taking into consideration gender differentials while working with communities eg ensuring that training opprtunites take into conisderation the different gender roles and responsibilities of men and women so that they are not missed out when One health activites are being carried out. We can follow up further one on one on this.

Thank you for this great feedback.

Thank you for the great question and for thinking ahead. My advice would be that the curiculum developers take advantage of this opportunity to include some key competency units on one health principles including socio-cultural, gender and behavioural aspects in their curiculum as well as a unit emphasizing on Indigenous knowledge and approaches in interacting with human health, animals, enviroment and conservation. It would be great to also include Practical sessions where the medical students get to work in multidisciplinary/tansdiciplinary set ups together with vets, environmentalists, social scientists, gender experts etc to tackle a common health problems as a team.