Building ‘One Health’ momentum for people, animals and the environment across the Global South
Hung Nguyen-Viet
Program Leader of Health (a.i.) at International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Lead of CGIAR initiative on One Health
One after the other, scientific presentations made at the highest levels are moving the needle on ‘whole of health’ approaches by, in and for developing countries
Visits to Ontario universities, 14 Jul 2023, Canada
The next month, ILRI’s Florence Mutua and I visited the Canadian universities of McMaster (community research center) and Guelph (One Health Institute) to describe real-world challenges and opportunities in conducting community-based and -driven One Health research in Asia and Africa with students and faculty members working on One Health. You can watch our seminar at the is here.
IFAP Annual Meeting, 16–19 Jul 2023, Toronto
Following our university talks, we had the pleasure of making presentations at the annual meeting of the International Association of Food Protection (IFAP), in Toronto. The meeting was attended by more than 3,200 of top industry, academic and governmental food safety professionals from six continents. Along with Delia Grace and other colleagues, I was a speaker at that meeting in a special South-South Symposium—Learning from Large-Scale Food Safety Interventions in Wet Markets of Africa and Asia, where I emphasized the need for One Health approaches to food safety research and interventions.
In our session, we noted that after many decades of neglect, the last decade saw a range of food safety interventions aiming at sustainable and scalable improvements to food safety in wet markets. In particular, ILRI and partners have pioneered market-based approaches based on four essential elements of promoting enabling regulatory environment; training vendors in food safety and business skills; providing simple, cheap technologies; and, most importantly, ensuring motivations are in place for behaviour change.
The underlying premise is that professionalizing rather than criminalizing informal market actors improves food safety outcomes while at the same time improves nutrition and protects and enhances important sources of income and employment for the poor, especially poor women.
These interventions have been rigorously evaluated using different methodologies including randomized controlled trials and double difference evaluations.
At these Canada meetings, we happily met John McDermott, a former deputy director general for research at ILRI and a former director of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (CRP A4NH). This gave us the opportunity to acknowledge him for his long-standing support for, and many contributions to, ILRI and CGIAR One Health research. We went on to update him on progress of the (newish) CGIAR One Health initiative that is a follow-up to the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub initiative, both of which he had led.
ILRI and the Southeast Asia One Health University Network (SEAOHUN) organized a workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, 19–20 Dec 2023
One Health comes to life on the ground in 2023
Field work and labs established in
Narok County, Kenya, with the Narok County Department of Veterinary Services
Oloitokitok , Kajiado County, Kenya
Kapiti Research Station, Machakos County, Kenya
Busia, Busia County, Kenya
Thai Nguyen, Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam
One Health field collaborations/projects/visits of ILRI and CGIAR
February: Field visits to wildlife and food safety research conducted in Lao Cai and Dong Nai provinces of southern Vietnam
March: Collaboration with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research and the Indian Veterinary Research Institute
April: Partnerships with Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Uganda and Vietnam
Let me conclude by acknowledging here the 40-plus partners that CGIAR is working closely with to make the world safer and fairer, healthier and better nourished, richer and more sustainable, through its One Health and antimicrobial resistance work.
Some of my ILRI and CGIAR colleagues working on One Health:
Salaviriuse Ahimbisibwe, Uganda, veterinarian, One Health specialist
Silvia Alonso, Spain, epidemiologist
Kebede Amenu, Ethiopia, veterinary epidemiologist
Bernard Bett, Kenya, veterinary epidemiologist
Annie Cook, UK, veterinary epidemiologist
Sinh Dang-Xuan, Vietnam, veterinary epidemiologist
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Ram Deka, India, veterinary epidemiologist
Michel Dione, Senegal, veterinary epidemiologist
Eric Fèvre, UK, veterinary epidemiologist
Ilona Gluecks, Germany, veterinarian, clinical animal trials
Delia Grace, Ireland, veterinary epidemiologist
John Juma, Kenya, bioinformatician
Theodore Knight-Jones, UK, veterinary epidemiologist
Max Korir, Kenya, geographic information systems analyst
Hu Suk Lee*, Korea, veterinary epidemiologist
Sonja Leitner, Austria, ecologist and biogeochemist
Tezira Lore, Kenya, food safety and zoonotic communications specialist
Johanna Lindahl*, Sweden, veterinary epidemiologist
Sarah Lysholm, Sweden, veterinarian, One Health specialist
Arshnee Moodley, South Africa, veterinary epidemiologist
Dishon Muloi, Kenya, antimicrobial resistance specialist
Siobhan Mor, Australia, veterinary epidemiologist
Florence Mutua, Kenya, veterinary epidemiologist
Geoffrey Njenga, Kenya, One Health communications specialist
Chi Nguyen, Vietnam, communications specialist
Innocent Obilil, Uganda, data information systems specialist
Ekta Patel, Kenya, molecular biologist and One Health communications
Shauna Richards, Canada, veterinary epidemiologist
Kristina Roesel, Germany, veterinary epidemiologist
Dieter Shillinger*, Germany, veterinarian, ILRI deputy director general for Biosciences
Jason Sircely, USA, ecosystem ecologist
Lian Thomas, UK, veterinary epidemiologist
Fred Unger, Germany, veterinary epidemiologist
Pamela Wairagala, Uganda, communications specialist
And many more ILRI graduate fellows, research officers and technical staff based in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Uganda and Vietnam.
*These scientists recently departed ILRI.
A bit about me
Hung Nguyen leads (a.i.) ILRI's Health Program and the CGIAR Initiative on One Health. His research focuses on the link between agriculture and health, food safety, and infectious and zoonotic diseases with an emphasis on risk assessment and intervention of food safety in informal and traditional markets with using a One Health (and Ecohealth) approach. He was the ILRI regional representative for East and Southeast Asia, the flagship leader of food safety of the CGIAR research program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and held management functions in A4NH and CGIAR Covid-19 Hub. He is a member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) and of the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP 2) and was a WHO expert to study the SARS-CoV-2 origins in Wuhan, China in 2021. He has 20 years experience working in Asia, Africa and Europe. Prior to joining ILRI, he was with Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Sandec/Eawag in Switzerland and co-founded and led the Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research at Hanoi University of Public Health, Vietnam and coordinated the regional initiative on Ecohealth field building in Southeast Asia. He is from Vietnam and holds a PhD in life and environmental sciences from France.