Humans, Other Animals and ‘One Health’ in the Early Twenty-First Century

Cassidy, Angela

Drawing on these developments, in 2005, Professor Jakob Zinsstag and a group of his colleagues at the Swiss Tropical Public Health Institute (STPH) published an article in the international medical journal The Lancet arguing for the OH approach. 54 Bringing OH to a much bigger audience, including medical doctors and public health professionals, Zinsstag et al. started their article with a discussion of Schwabe and OM (citing VMHH) before proceeding to discuss the importance of ecosystem health (citing the WCS). They argued that OH needed to extend beyond the specifics of human and veterinary medicine and include broader ideas about health as wellbeing. They, in turn, added their own perspectives, to place a greater emphasis on research into tropical medicine and livestock health. They also introduced the public health concept of 'health systems', defined by the WHO as 'all organizations, people and actions whose primary intent is to promote, restore or maintain health. This includes efforts to influence determinants of health as well as more direct health-improving activities'. 55 This further broadened 53 For examples of the OWOH logo, see Cook et al. (2004) . 54 Zinsstag et al. (2005) . 55 Tanner (2005) OH by highlighting the social and administrative aspects of healthcare. Zinsstag and his colleagues applied this idea to human and animal health by arguing that, for example, vaccinating animals against diseases such as brucellosis or rabies can simultaneously protect human populations. 56 The STPH is a partly state-funded research institute, devoted to research and clinical practice in tropical diseases and global public health. It was founded in 1943 by the zoologist Rudolf Geigy, who directed the institute until 1975. 57 The original aim of the then Swiss Tropical Institute was twofold: to perform research into tropical diseases-a field that straddled human medicine, biology and agriculture from its very foundation, as explained in Chapter 5 58 -and to train scientists, administrators and others preparing to live and work in French and British colonies. 59 Geigy himself worked across multiple disciplines, including zoology, physiology and embryology, and the institute was organized along these lines. From early in its history, the STPH worked with an affiliated research institute in Cote D'Ivoire, the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques (CSRS), to enable longstanding collaborative partnerships between Swiss and Ivoirian scientists investigating tropical medicine. 60 Today it is a large and thriving organization, with divisions focused on epidemiology, parasitology, international health, diagnostics, drug development and education.