Capacitating One Health in Eastern and Southern Africa – evidence shows appetite and pathways for institutional change

The One Health approach is increasingly recognized as essential if we are to tackle and reduce some of the most pressing impacts on livelihoods and health for people, animals, and ecosystems.

While individual health threats may require specific technical skills to address them, responses to increasingly multidimensional challenges like COVID-19, Ebola, avian influenza or the spread of antimicrobial resistant pathogens require collective, institutional and sometimes society-wide actions.

Achieving these collaborative responses poses institutional, societal and behavioural challenges that can only be overcome through different mindsets and renewed capacities.

A recent conference of partners in the Capacitating One Health in Eastern and Southern Africa project shone a spotlight on exactly these institutional and behavioural strategies, providing a platform for the country teams to share progress and lessons.

Convened by the International Livestock Research Institute and hosted by the University of Pretoria, the project’s first biennial conference in November 2023 brought together project partners and local project implementors to take stock of progress and activities in four work packages and set priorities for the coming years.

Photo credit: A Borana woman with her small ruminants, Yabello, Ethiopia (ILRI/Camille Hanotte)