Prevention is cheaper than cure: One Health in practice for sustainable livestock production in Sub-Saharan Africa

Int. Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)  

Time: Tuesday, 19. January 2021, 09:00 – 10:00 (CET)
Languages: English, German

Panel guests will be announced soon

In Sub-Saharan Africa the majority of the human population depends on livestock as a source of food, income, or both. Communities live in close proximity to wild and domesticated animals in a shared environment. Even if a household does not own animals, they live in an integrated ecosystem where sources for water, food and shelter are shared. With more demand, the transmission of pathogens or other harmful agents increases with population growth and large scale industrial agriculture. Communities in low-income countries are also more exposed to environmental hazards due to climate change such as flooding and changes in disease vectors. All these aspects affect already vulnerable communities with little access to services and resources, and even more during times of a pandemic.

The panel will discuss why integrated One Health approaches help to make livestock keeping communities more resilient, even in the absence of a pandemic; the need for efforts to be better linked and coordinated and how it will help ongoing surveillance and early detection of pathogens with a potential for another global pandemic. A panel of experts from different sectors and different disciplines will discuss how this is already being done in research for development and how to strenghten these food systems in the future. The panel includes: the public development sector in Germany, One Health researchers and extension organizations based in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a global UN agency.