ONE HEALTH

Covid19 outbreak has taught us that zoonoses are going to be one of the greatest challenges of this century. Only by understanding the theoretical model that forms the foundation of One Health it is possible to apply this process in the real world, also extending its scope to an even broader operational levels represented by Global and Planetary Health.

THE ONE HEALTH TRIANGLE

The illusory white triangle developed by the Italian perception psychologist Gaetano Kanisza (1955), has been merged with the three components of the theoretical framework of One Health represented by Humans, Animals and the Environment. If you focus your attention on every single component of the triad one at a time, you don’t see any triangle because in the picture there is no triangle. But if you look at the three components at the same time “as a whole”, you see clearly the white triangle. One Health is represented by the white triangle that doesn’t exist but we see. Seeing a white triangle in this illusion demonstrate the Gestalt idea that the sum of visual perception is more than its parts because the observer view all objects together as a single image. The One Health framework origin has been generated by a Holistic approach to One Medicine that is well explained by the Gestalt school of psychology. According to this approach One Health is more than the sum of its three components, One Health is also everything that is in the area of the white triangle and that connects Humans, Animals and the Environment. Only by understanding the theoretical model that forms the foundation of One Health it is possible to apply this process in the real world, also extending its scope to an even broader operational levels represented by Global and Planetary Health (original image source Kanizsa 1955 available also as open source on Wikimedia, modified and merged with the One Health triad framework by Paolo Zucca 2021).

THE ONE HEALTH CYCLE

The One Health Cycle explains how the management of a zoonotic pandemic with a One Health approach works. A zoonotic pathogen from wild animals moves into livestock, pets, fur animals, or directly to humans. The One Health approach introduces the processes of “early education” (green) and “early prediction” (blue) that boost the early detection (red) and control (orange) efforts. Early education increases the number of young people able to recognize a zoonosis, while the Artificial Intelligence systems used in early prediction increase the ability to predict an outbreak in wildlife before the spillover can occur. Anthropogenic pressure, deforestation and bushmeat, climate changes, illegal animal trade, and intensive animal farm are all human-generated causal factors causing the emergence and resurgence of zoonotic diseases (Image credit Paolo Zucca).