'ONE HEALTH' and parasitology

Editorial Pertinent information about One Health may be accessed by visiting The One Health Initiative [1]. The website motto is "One Health is the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, plants and our environment ." The co-authors are a pro bono autonomous One Health team that has promoted the One Health concept on the website and elsewhere for several years. One Health is a concept that proposes that a paradigm shift in approaching diseases of humans and animals is essential to meet the challenges of the 21 st century. Human and veterinary medicine, as well as all other scientific health related disciplines, must begin forging co-equal, all-inclusive collaborations. Physicians, veterinarians , other health scientists, and their respective educational institutions, organizations and health agencies must work together. In the past, this approach has resulted in more rapid, efficacious, synergistic achievements in advancing health. Unfortunately, such an approach has been relatively rare during the 20 th century. Since ancient times the concept that animal health and the environment influence human health has been around. One Health began in the late 19 th and 20 th centuries with physician leaders in medicine like Rudolf Vir-chow, known as the "Father of comparative medicine, cellular pathology, and veterinary pathology" and Wil-liam Osler, called the "Father of Modern Medicine." They embraced the concept that human and animal health were inextricably linked. Virchow conducted experimental animal studies on Trichinella spiralis in porcine muscular tissue and cysticercosis and tuberculosis in cattle; he coined the term "zoonosis" and stated, "between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines – nor should there be." Osler, who studied in Berlin with, and was influenced by Virchow, helped promote "One Health" as he taught veterinary pathology at Montreal Veterinary College, and established veterinary pathology as an academic discipline in North America. The physician and veterinarian research team of Theobald Smith, and F. L. Kilborne, discovered the etiology of cattle fever, Babesia bigemina, and that it was transmitted by tick vectors, in 1893. Their important work helped set the stage for the discovery of the mosquito vector transmission of yellow fever by Walter Reed and colleagues. In October 1976, the virus causing Ebola Hemorrhagic fever was identified and named by the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) physician virolo-gist, Karl Johnson, in collaboration with veterinarian pathologist-virologist, Fred Murphy. They …

One Health is a concept that proposes that a paradigm shift in approaching diseases of humans and animals is essential to meet the challenges of the 21 st century. Human and veterinary medicine, as well as all other scientific-health related disciplines, must begin forging coequal, all-inclusive collaborations. Physicians, veterinarians, other health scientists, and their respective educational institutions, organizations and health agencies must work together. In the past, this approach has resulted in more rapid, efficacious, synergistic achievements in advancing health. Unfortunately, such an approach has been relatively rare during the 20 th century.
Since ancient times the concept that animal health and the environment influence human health has been around. One Health began in the late 19 th and 20 th centuries with physician leaders in medicine like Rudolf Virchow, known as the "Father of comparative medicine, cellular pathology, and veterinary pathology" and William Osler, called the "Father of Modern Medicine." They embraced the concept that human and animal health were inextricably linked. Virchow conducted experimental animal studies on Trichinella spiralis in porcine muscular tissue and cysticercosis and tuberculosis in cattle; he coined the term "zoonosis" and stated, "between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines -nor should there be." Osler, who studied in Berlin with, and was influenced by Virchow, helped promote "One Health" as he taught veterinary pathology at Montreal Veterinary College, and established veterinary pathology as an academic discipline in North America.
The physician and veterinarian research team of Theobald Smith, and F. L. Kilborne, discovered the etiology of cattle fever, Babesia bigemina, and that it was transmitted by tick vectors, in 1893. Their important work helped set the stage for the discovery of the mosquito vector transmission of yellow fever by Walter Reed and colleagues.
In October 1976, the virus causing Ebola Hemorrhagic fever was identified and named by the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) physician virologist, Karl Johnson, in collaboration with veterinarian pathologist-virologist, Fred Murphy. They collaborated on zoonotic viruses, their pathogenesis, epidemiology, and ecology for many years.
The late 20 th , and particularly the early 21 st century, have been significantly subject to the risks from emerging deadly zoonotic diseases such as human immunodefi-ciency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and others. This phenomenon demands the urgent need for all human medical and veterinary medical scientific professionals to renew and increase collaborative efforts.
One Health has accelerated biomedical research discoveries and expanded scientific knowledge in clinical health care. Some clinical health examples are elaborated upon in the One Health Initiative website articles including cancer, orthopedic biomechanical prosthetics, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, heart-valve advances, and vaccine development. The late renowned 20 th century veterinary epidemiologist, parasitologist, and global authority on zoonoses, Calvin W. Schwabe at the University of California coined the term "One Medicine" (now commonly referred to as "One Health") which was aimed at unifying human medical and veterinary medical disciplines against zoonotic diseases occurring in the public health arena. Two examples of recently emerging zoonotic disease epidemics include the avian influenza A H5N1 strain that primarily affects poultry (with some linked human occurrences) and the most recent human pandemic of H1N1 influenza that has spread across Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States.
Included among many current and previous online topics from Parasites and Vectors is the zoonotic protozoan parasite responsible for African Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). An excellent history has been provided by Steverding [2]. An interesting common parasite of dogs, i.e. Dirofilaria immitis (heartworm) is also a rare zoonotic disease in humans. Aspects of this parasitic species and others are described by Otranto et al. [3].
Parasitologists, of all the health professional scientists, are generally most familiar with the long list of parasitic zoonoses that affect humans via animals as well as specific details pertaining to each. Hence, the critical need for One Health research collaborations and cooperation. Veterinary medical school students usually receive considerably more exposure to parasitology than do human medical school students. This is largely due to the much greater volume of endoparasite (and ectoparasite) infections and infection rates for animals vis-à-vis humans. Thus, epidemiologic prevention, diagnosis, control and treatment needs of animals exceed those for humans. Yet, there remain significant research requirements for understanding ideal management in human and animal species utilizing One Health principles.

One Health in Action
The official report of the American Public Health Association's Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, 19 th Edition, edited by physician David L. Heymann, includes a staggering number of zoonotic parasites.
Heymann, a One Health supporter/advocate, is currently Chairman of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) with sites across the United Kingdom. He is also chairing an Australian scientific advisory committee for a One Health Symposium entitled, "The 1 st International One Health Congress: Human Health, Animal Health, the Environment and Global Survival", tentatively proposed for 14-16 February 2011 in Melbourne. One Health supporter/advocate veterinarian, Martyn Jeggo Director, Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), chairs the organizing committee responsible for developing a framework for the symposium; AAHL will also be working in conjunction with a number of colleges.