Wiku Adisasmito (University of Indonesia)
Health Security related to One Health Concept

Wiku Adisasmito was the first speaker for Day 2 and provided an engaging and insightful presentation about health security related to the One Health Concept. He began by outlining the global and national challenges due to land use change, global mobility, man-made disasters, climate change, natural disasters and infectious disease outbreak. He strongly communicated there are new disease threats due to the imbalance of nature. In the last 18 years 5 infectious diseases have become huge threats that create problems for all of us. The alleged cases of misuse of biological agents detailed in his presentation. The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched in 2013 in response to the global threat that infectious diseases constitute in our increasingly interconnected world, the GHSA focuses on the three key steps of prevent, detect and respond. Wiku Adisasmito progressed to focus on the One Health Approach, what is is and why it is so critical to the future of global public health, particularly for infectious diseases. One health requires systems thinking, leadership, management, culture and beliefs, values and ethics, communication and informatics, collaboration and cooperation. Using the example of Indonesia he illustrated how the one health approach needs to be considered at the global, national and regional levels through supported systems; global governance is extremely important and a getaway for change. Health security was then discussed, during COVID-19 the 5S Approach was developed to strengthen the health security; strategy, structure, system, skill and speed to target this infectious disease. It was to learn the necessity for cross-sectoral coordination to enhance targeted outcomes. Wiku Adisasmito closed his presentation by emphasising the importance of preparing for the public health emergencies of the future through preparedness, early warning, notification, response, recovery: capacity building- prevent, detect and response. Additionally, integrating Life-Science Laboratories and through interconnecting them will improve the efficiency of detection of future infectious diseases.

Roger Frutos (Le recherche agronomique pour le développement, Montpellier (CIRAD))
Zoonoses and One Health

Zoonoses have become a dominant focus after the COVID-19 pandemic. In his enthusiastic presentation, Roger Frutos has shared a lot of new insight regarding the Zoonoses and One Health. Zoonoses can simply be described as a disease that happens in wildlife animals that reach humans, also named an emerging infectious disease. Due to a large proportion of humans focusing on self rather than the ecological dimension, caused by another living organism. This has led to the usual misconception that the disease came to us, humans. This did not consider the infectious disease as the multi-pathogen disease. There is a need for us to change our point of view. Like the Copernican Revolution, at first we thought that earth is the centre of our universe, but then in reality, the sun is the centre of our universe. This can be applied to the zoonoses as infectious disease, it should be changed from human centred (anthropocentrism) to pathogen centred (pathogen-centrism). The reason behind this is because pathogens can move from one species to another. So infectious disease does not move from animal to human, It just pathogen moves from one species to another. More about pathogens, they usually have the switching mechanism depending on its host. It can adapt regarding the host condition. Let’s just say it was caused by a virus. Virus can recognise its receptor and it’s like the virus attaching itself to docking sites. The only thing the virus needs is a contact. The other thing about viruses, they can evolve and adapt to the receptor and it happens rapidly and usually specifically to RNA viruses. Some of them are usually mutated and most of them are zombies and not viable. That is the reason why they can’t be defeated by one specific vaccine and the term humans always suffer from the disease caused by RNA viruses is not a coincidence, its nature. To point out, the mutation itself usually occurs after the infection. Rodger Frutos closed with a statement ‘to be clear, we need to consider the position of the human in the dimension of pathogens of their dynamic nature, because this is one health concept all about’.

Matthew Grigg (Menzies School of Health Research)
One health approaches for zoonotic malaria

Matthew Grigg provided a detailed presentation on One Health Approaches for Zoonotic Malaria in specific to plasmodium knowlesi (P.knowlesi) which is a monkey borne disease. He communicated that monkey malaria is large in South East Asia and there are over 5 main types. P.knowlesi is known to cross multiple host families and has been around for over 100,000 year. In 1965 the first naturally occurring infection was present in a human which triggered great interest in how much of a prevalence this malaria is in south east asia and it was discovered that mosquitoes can also act as transmitters of this disease. Matthew Grigg highlighted how the lack of understanding is due to the fact that current conventional tools of diagnosis for malaria were unable to detect p.knowlesi and misdiagnosis of this malaria can have devastating treatment issues. The threat of this disease is evident for the example of Malaysia as other malaria type cases have decreased and this specific type has increased. Between 6-9% of cases of p.knowlesi is a severe disease and a 2.5/100,000 mortality rate currently which exemplifies that prevention activities are not strong enough. Matthew Griggs communicated that the drivers of emergence are anthropogenic environmental change and ecological linkage mechanisms and that these create an increased risk of infection for humans. Other drivers of the increase of p.knowlesi are human land use, forest loss, forest fragmentation and oil palm expansion. He presented some interesting changes in monkey host behaviour prior and post deforestation, during deforestation; changes in macaque troop home range size, movement speeds and habitat use. After deforestation: ranging behaviour equilibrates after seeking and occupying new habitat. Matthew Grigg closed his presentation by outlining the importance of One Health Multidisciplinary Projects and the current project he and other organisations are involved in and how the focus is to gain insight from multiple organisations and individuals to mutually benefit from multiple perspectives.