One Health Approach & Global Action Plan on AMR

What is One Health Approach on AMR?

The rational use of antibiotics in humans, animals, and agriculture warrants coordinated action in all sectors. These multi-sectoral, multidisciplinary and multi-institutional actions constitute the ‘One Health’ approach.

Importance of One Health Approach

The one Health approach has gained currency across the world as an efficient and cost-effective response to AMR and several other challenges, especially endemic zoonoses (diseases transmitted between animals and humans) and pandemics.
This approach is reinforced by the fact that all the epidemics in the current millennium (SARS, MERS, bird flu and COVID-19) have originated from animals because of unwanted excursion of humans into animal domains.
The Coronavirus pandemic has emphasised the urgency of implementing One Health.
India’s National Action Plan on AMR is an excellent example of the One Health approach and can be used as a guiding document to develop a workable road map for the country to respond to other similar public health challenges.
AMR is one of the biggest challenges to human and animal health. There is a need to optimally utilise emerging technologies to improve human health and development.
One Health has been acknowledged as the optimum approach to counter the impact of AMR and future pandemics and must be adopted expeditiously.

How does it work?

This endeavour utilises existing expertise and infrastructure in various sectors with a focus on inter-sectoral coordination, collaboration, and communication.
The purpose of One Health is to provide a formal platform for experts to plan and work together towards shared objectives.
Implementation of One Health warrants a strong and continuous national narrative on zoonoses.
This approach advocates a multi-sectoral response to public health problems, particularly pandemics, as also to address issues related to AMR.
It supports focussed actions on the human-animal-environment interface for the prevention, detection and response to the public health events that influence global health and food security.

World Health Organization Global Action Plan on AMR (2015)

At the Sixty-eight World Health Assembly in May 2015, the World Health Assembly endorsed a global action plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, the most urgent drug resistance trend
The goal of the global action plan is to ensure, for as long as possible, continuity of successful treatment and prevention of infectious diseases with effective and safe medicines that are quality-assured, used in a responsible way, and accessible to all who need them.
To achieve this goal, the global action plan sets out five strategic objectives:
- to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance;
- to strengthen knowledge through surveillance and research;
- to reduce the incidence of infection;
- to optimize the use of antimicrobial agents; and
- develop the economic case for sustainable investment that takes account of the needs of all countries, and increase investment in new medicines, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other interventions.