One World, One Health

Send us Fan Mail Three full years into the COVID-19 pandemic and the world still doesn’t have a firm answer about where the virus came from. People who have been studying coronaviruses and other viruses for decades say it’s overwhelmingly likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from animals , just as the 2002-2004 SARS virus did , the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS virus did, as Ebola does, and...

Send us Fan Mail Just about everyone has had an unpleasant fungal encounter, usually something as simple as athlete’s foot, ringworm, or dandruff. But fungal infections can become much more dangerous and even deadly, especially in people whose immune systems are damaged by another infection such as HIV, tuberculosis, or even COVID-19. Mold species such as aspergillus are in the air all the time an...

Send us Fan Mail Helping someone less fortunate feels good, right?  But when people from rich countries show up in low- and middle-income countries dispensing goodwill and largesse, their efforts may, at best, be too little and, at worst, could do harm. Dr. Kirk Scirto, a family practice physician in Buffalo, New York, has devoted more than two decades to trying to help others through global healt...

Send us Fan Mail When salty water seeps into a freshwater swamp, the resident alligators risk getting sick and have to fend off invading sharks. Can a monkey scientist and a pirate cat help solve the conflict? Dr. Susannah Sandrin, Clinical Professor in Environmental Science & Science Education at Arizona State University helped make sure the science was sound in this episode of the cartoon se...

Send us Fan Mail Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide, killing tens of millions of people every year. COVID-19 alone has killed more than 6.8 million people , according to Johns Hopkins University. Drug-resistant superbugs directly kill 1.27 million people a year, according to one recent prominent study. Surely drug companies are all over this potentially lucrative m...

Send us Fan Mail Lemurs are cute and interesting, and they live in only one place: Madagascar.  As primates, they are related to humans, monkeys, and apes. They are also endangered .  Dr. Travis Steffens has wanted to help save lemurs since he was a little boy. On the way to living that dream, he found out that he couldn’t save these animals without also helping the people and the environment. His...

Send us Fan Mail Can a picture lie? They can and do – especially when they are used out of context. And photographs and other imagery are regularly abused when it comes to illustrating global health. Available images illustrating disease outbreaks, refugee needs, and even benign public health campaigns routinely show Black and Brown people far more often than they do light-skinned residents of wea...

Send us Fan Mail From Ebola outbreaks in Africa to the spread of mpox and, of course, COVID, a disease that emerges in one place can threaten people the world over. Governments, nonprofit organizations, and pharmaceutical companies all get involved in detecting and fighting these outbreaks, but there’s another player that flies under the radar. The US military has to prepare and protect personnel...

Send us Fan Mail Antibiotics can be wonder drugs. Not only do they save lives, but they can also make farm animals fatten up more quickly. But their overuse hurts everyone as the germs they are designed to kill evolve more and more defenses, giving rise to superbugs that infect people and animals alike. The ROADMAP project aims to find better ways to help farmers and food producers use fewer antib...

Send us Fan Mail Can you make a difference for the planet and for your own health if you wait an extra year to update your smartphone or get a new laptop computer? You can if it means using fewer electronics products that are loaded with toxic metals, says Dr. Dele Ogunseitan, a professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California Irvine. In this episode of One Wor...

Send us Fan Mail Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest threats people worldwide are fighting – sometimes without even knowing it’s a threat. But germs that have evolved to resist the effects of the drugs used to fight them directly kill more than a million people a year, and they’re a factor in the deaths of close to a million more. And women are far more likely to be infected with and th...

Send us Fan Mail Disease outbreaks are inevitable. Germs are part of our world, and there’s no way to completely eradicate them. But epidemics and pandemics are preventable. Vaccines, better treatments, hygiene, improvements in ventilation, and teaching people how diseases spread can all give individuals and communities the tools they need to contain disease outbreaks before they turn into epidemi...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine catching an infection that could once be cured with a few pills. But the bug causing your infection has evolved, and now that bottle of pills is useless – and even treatment in a hospital, with drugs dripped in through an IV, isn’t helping.  With the emergence of drug-resistant superbugs, this terrifying scene is playing out worldwide, but the greatest burden is faced in l...

Send us Fan Mail Grandmothers are a source of wisdom, support, and influence in most societies around the world. In much of the West, the emphasis is on youth, and western-based groups trying to help people in other parts of the world forget that most cultures rely on extended families. Dr. Judi Aubel, Director of the Grandmother Project , noticed early in her career in public health, adult educat...

Send us Fan Mail Lots of factors make rabies the scariest virus known. It kills virtually 100% of its victims, and it’s killing close to 60,000 people a year around the world – many of them young children. Animals can carry and transmit the virus even if they have no symptoms at all, and people can develop a fatal and untreatable infection even if they do not know they’ve been exposed by a bite, s...

Send us Fan Mail All humanity relies on forests. Even if you don’t live near one, they produce the air you breathe and are a source of food, clean water, wood, and even medicines. But people are destroying forests at an unprecedented rate, and it’s hurting not just the forests and the animals and plants in them but also human health. Diseases such as Ebola , hantavirus, Zika, chikungunya , and, ye...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone’s heard the saying about how a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane half a world away. In this episode, we chat with One Health Trust (OHT) Founder and President Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan about how OHT’s new center in the Nimai Valley outside Bangalore, India, will incorporate this idea into its design and intent. Butterflies are fragile, but vital p...

Send us Fan Mail Two centuries ago, people could die from a simple scratch. It was the pre-antibiotic era when infections killed babies within hours, a cold could turn deadly within days, and people survived injuries through luck alone. Now a pill can prevent strep throat from turning into scarlet fever and antibiotics keep surgery safe. But because bacteria evolve and mutate so quickly, many drug...

Send us Fan Mail Drug-resistant superbugs are killers. They directly kill more than a million people a year, the World Health Organization says, and contribute to five million deaths a year. But vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected in the first place, so why not make better use of vaccines to fight these superbugs? In this episode, Dr. David Heymann, a veteran of the war against...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Nicholas White of the University of Oxford in the UK and Mahidol University in Thailand tells us how the world is losing ground in the fight against malaria, in no small part because of the emergence of resistance. Malaria is caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, and these parasites have repeatedly evolved to escape the effects of drug after drug ove...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Thomas Van Boeckel tells us about how aquaculture might be helping drive the rise of drug-resistant superbugs around the world. Three-quarters of antibiotics sold globally go to farmed animals. Some of these animals are fish and shrimp. Thomas Van Boeckel studies the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other drug-resistant microbes at the Department of Envir...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Hsu Li Yang chats with our host Maggie Fox about how Singapore managed the COVID-19 pandemic. Singapore is a small country in Southeast Asia, but its experience with the first outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus – SARS – in 2003 and 2004 helped prepare leaders there for SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. Dr. Hsu Li Yang, Vice Dean for Global He...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our guests, Dr. Joakim Larsson and Dr. Amy Kirby , chat with our host, Maggie Fox , about the use of wastewater to detect known and unknown pathogens. What have we learned from tracking COVID-19 in wastewater?  How can we use wastewater surveillance for monitoring antimicrobial resistance (AMR)? Could we someday detect and stop the next pandemic by sifting through...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our guest, Dr. Bethany Young Holt , chats with our host, Maggie Fox , about products that combine contraceptives with sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention, Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (MPTs), for women. Do women get STIs as often as men?  Why do women need MPTs?  Aren't condoms enough?  What do these technologies look like? Let’s find out!

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our guest, Dr. Ali Khan , talks to our host,  Maggie Fox , about what the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency, monkeypox.  Is monkeypox similar to COVID-19?  Why is this disease spreading so quickly now? Is this cause for panic? Let’s find out!