The Lure of One Health

Abstract

The lure of One Health is the easily appreciated sense that people, plants, animals, and their environments share health outcomes. It is the positive sum game, where gains in environmental and animal health benefit humans and vice versa. It’s a collective approach to inextricably shared fortunes; one for all and all for one. The trap (that other sense of a lure) of One Health is the tendency to obscure some important questions, or even imply that something can be delivered smoothly and in an uncontentious manner, when in fact there are bound to be uncomfortable trade-offs and compromises. The health calculus may be more complex than the positive sum implies. By bundling everything and everyone together, are we missing something, skating over questions that still need to be asked regarding how to approach questions of more than human life and health? Starting with an emblematic case for One Health (rabies control in sub-Saharan Africa), and then moving on to less clear-cut examples, I outline the case for as well as the limitations to One health. My aim is to set up some resources for reading the essays collected together in this book and for considering the importance and possible issues with One Health more generally. The question to take to this piece and to the essays that follow might be, what is gained and what might be lost when we adopt the One Health signature?