One World, One Health

Send us Fan Mail

Humans developed antibiotics in the 20th century.  These wonder drugs defeat killer microbes and have revolutionized medicine, making surgeries and treatments like chemotherapy much safer. Unfortunately, people are overusing and misusing antibiotics, helping bacteria learn how to defend themselves against these lifesaving drugs.

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the top 10 global health threats. Drug-resistant microbes directly killed nearly 1.3 million people in 2019 – more than breast cancer, for example. The World Health Organization predicts they’ll kill as many as 10 million people a year by 2050 if humanity doesn’t act.

Can we take action to control the drug resistance these germs continuously build up,  and can we develop new and better drugs for our arsenal against these killer bacteria?

Dr. Manica Balasegaram hopes so. As Executive Director of The Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership, he’s working to encourage the development of better antibiotics that target the infections that affect people the most – and then to get them to the people who most need them.

Listen as Manica chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about the ways he hopes to help solve this life-or-death problem.

Send us Fan Mail

Drug-resistant germs are big killers. The World Health Organization estimates that infections caused by drug-resistant microbes help kill close to five million people a year, a number that’s expected to grow. 

The world needs new antibiotics, but bacteria are outwitting scientists and drug developers at every turn.  

Microbes can produce complex molecules, such as antibiotics, to protect themselves from other organisms. And they naturally develop survival mechanisms to fight these molecules, including swapping genetic material among themselves. On top of that, continuous exposure from our own use of antibiotics contributes to the inevitable rise of bacteria that can survive even the newest antibiotics. 

Among the biggest killers are Gram-negative bacteria, which are also harder to fight because of their extra layers of protection – or armor, as Dr. Skyler Cochrane, a research scholar at Duke University, calls it.

Gram-negative bacteria cause plague, cholera, whooping cough, salmonella, typhoid fever, and urinary tract infections, and are the root of many pneumonia and bloodstream infections. 

Cochrane is working in a lab that is looking for chinks in the armor of Gram-negative bacteria. 

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as she talks about a promising new compound that might just offer the first new weapon against these bacteria in decades. 

Send us Fan Mail

When COVID-19 started spreading around the world, many groups of indigenous people knew just what to do. They retreated into the forests they knew so well, an isolation practice that had helped their forebears survive countless other outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics.

But their survival skills didn’t stop there. Away from modern methods of food production, they turned to their knowledge of local, traditional foods to stay comfortable and healthy.

Dr. Carol Zavaleta-Cortijo, a public health researcher at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, studies indigenous groups such as the Shawi people in the Amazonian region of Peru and the Irula and Kurumba communities in Tamil Nadu, India. During the pandemic, she found that these groups made good use of their skills and knowledge that had been passed down orally over generations to get through the pandemic. She says these skills will help them survive the effects of climate change and other disasters as well.

Many indigenous communities applied the One Health approach – acknowledging the interconnectedness of the health of the environment, animals, and humans – in their way of life before the term was coined. In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Zavaleta-Cortijo chats with host Maggie Fox about what she’s learned from these indigenous groups, and what all of us can learn from them about resilience and protecting our planet.

Send us Fan Mail

Few diseases are as fast-moving and as horrific as cholera. Fiction may focus on the internal bleeding caused by Ebola, while movie scripts about zombie apocalypses pull from what’s known about rabies.

But cholera can infect someone in the morning and kill them by the evening. It can carry off a child before a parent can even register the little one is suffering from more than a run-of-the-mill tummy bug. Worse still, the diarrhea and vomiting caused by the infection carry the killer germs right back into the water supply that is its source.

Cholera never really goes away, but a recent upsurge has hit countries across the African continent from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia up to Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. It’s infecting people in Pakistan, Lebanon, and Syria and is making a comeback in Haiti. A billion people are at risk, the World Health Organization says. Climate disasters and a weakening of public health resources are to blame.

Most measures used to strengthen public health, in general, can help fight cholera, says Amanda McClelland, senior vice president at Resolve to Save Lives.

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as McClelland tells us about the gravity of the current multi-country outbreak of cholera. She explains that measures like clean water, good sanitation, vaccination, and access to basic healthcare can all help prevent cholera and stop ongoing outbreaks. 

Send us Fan Mail

Fungi can be our friends. They’re responsible, after all, for some of our favorite foods and drinks, including beer, bread, wine, and cheese. Penicillin, the parent of all antibiotics, comes from the fungal family as well.

But fungi can also cause disease in humans, animals, and plants. In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Ana Alastruey-Izquierdo,  a research scientist at the Mycology Reference Laboratory of Spain head of the mold unit, explains how fungal diseases affect people, how they evolve to evade treatment, and what people are doing that helps make these fungal infections even more dangerous.

Climate change and the imprudent use of antifungal treatments on crops are both working to toughen up fungal pathogens, she says. The World Health Organization even released a list of the world's most preoccupying fungal pathogens in 2022.

Listen as Dr. Alastruey-Izquierdo tells us why we need more awareness of fungal infections and what we can do to fight them. 

Send us Fan Mail

So many people are working to improve health around the world. But many of these efforts tend to go in one direction – people in wealthy countries traveling to lower-income countries with resources and ideas.

Yet people everywhere have great ideas. It’s a shame not to make use of them. And in making good use of locally generated ideas, efforts to improve health naturally become fairer and more equitable.

In this episode of One World, One Health, we caught up with two people working to promote these good ideas from around the world. Some are hi-tech apps, but some are really low-tech. How about friendship benches, an analog way for older women to reach out and share their experiences and promote mental health in their communities?

Lola Adedokun is the Executive Director of the Aspen Global Innovators Group at the Aspen Institute and co-Chair of the Aspen Institute Forum on Women and Girls.

Blair Palmer is the Senior Director for Foundation Partnerships at UNICEF USA. 

Listen as Blair and Lola talk about some of these great ideas and how to better share them.

Send us Fan Mail

Be prepared. It’s a great credo for parenting, camping, or, perhaps most important, an emergency. 

The world seemed ill-prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, but in reality, experts had extensive plans in place. They just did not get put into action. 

One of the planners was Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious diseases physician who has held leadership positions at the US Food and Drug Administration and who helped advise the White House. Now the director of the Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship or COMPASS at Georgetown University, Dr. Goodman helped put together plans for fighting antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – known to many people as drug-resistant superbugs. He’s also helped plan for new influenza pandemics, as well as pandemics of other viruses. 

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Dr. Goodman describes the threats that face us, how to successfully plan for them, and what to do when those plans go wrong or fall short. 

Send us Fan Mail

Hindsight is 20-20 – it’s an old saying and never more true than when looking back at an epidemic. But sometimes looking backward can help people think more clearly when planning ahead.

Dr. Sabine Franklin, a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, is an economist using her training to better understand public health.

She went to west Africa to talk to people about the Ebola epidemic (2014-2016) that killed 11,000 people, most of them in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Franklin wanted to see how communities responded during and after the epidemic, and what might be useful going forward.

In her ongoing research on outbreaks,  she's found that people don't always apply lessons learned to diseases, like what we've seen in the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts are also failing to use what they already know in trying to respond to ever-worsening outbreaks of avian influenza.

Listen to this episode of One World, One Health as Dr. Franklin describes where she sees the world falling short, and how she thinks things could be turned around in time using the One Health approach to help us all better handle the next pandemic.

Send us Fan Mail

When Ebola virus was first spotted in west Africa at the end of 2013, few people were ready. The region had no developed or systematic health system, patients were scattered across remote rural areas, and other infections, such as malaria, were common and mimicked the early symptoms.

But a team in remote Kenema, in Sierra Leone, had been working to fight a different virus – Lassa Fever. They had set up a clinic with diagnostic testing and communications with the outside world. A team of experts had been trained in how to detect and diagnose viral hemorrhagic fevers. They may not have been expecting Ebola, but they had the expertise and some of the equipment and infrastructure needed to help people understand what was happening as the deadly and frightening virus started to spread across borders.

Dr. Robert Garry, who specializes in viruses, had helped set up the team studying Lassa in west Africa. He helped the world understand what was going on with Ebola and quickly understood that his team’s preparations in Kenema had helped in the fight to track and control the virus.

Such preparations also helped when COVID-19 started spreading around the world in 2020.

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Dr. Garry explains how he got interested in studying viruses and how preparedness matters in fighting global threats.

Send us Fan Mail

Antibiotics are lifesavers. These 20th-century drugs can save lives within hours, often given as just a handful of pills or an injection. 

But the germs they fight often fight back and evolve quickly. They develop what’s known as antimicrobial resistance, and then the drugs people use to treat infections become worthless. 

This happens naturally, but people and the way we behave often help it develop faster. When people use drugs when they don’t need them, or take the wrong drug, that allows bacteria, viruses, or fungi to evolve new tricks to evade the effects of medicines. 

These drug-resistant superbugs kill millions of people every year, and the problem is getting worse. 

The One Health Trust is working to educate medical professionals about better ways to conserve and care for these precious antibiotics. Policies and practices crafted to ensure that antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungal drugs continue to work are known as antimicrobial stewardship. 

Dr. Azra Hasan, the Head of Academic Programs at OHT, is leading the One Health Trust’s efforts to help physicians, pharmacists, and others learn ways to better preserve antimicrobial drugs. 

In this episode of One World, One Health, Azra explains first what the problem is, and what to do about it.