The One Health approach has become a key tool in the prevention, investigation, surveillance, and control of infectious diseases. In connection with this, the One Health Institute of the Faculty of Health Sciences, the Faculty of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences, and the Metagenomics Center organized an international professional conference between May 11–13 to raise awareness of the complex risks posed by infections to human health, as well as opportunities for prevention.
The first two DOCIDOH conferences provided a forum for doctors, veterinarians, environmentalists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists, ecologists, and numerous other experts to exchange experiences, formulate proposed solutions, and discuss issues related to the One Health approach.
In addition to promoting dialogue and knowledge exchange, the DOCIDOH conference sought to explore the latest scientific findings and challenges, including antimicrobial resistance, climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, food safety and foodborne diseases, emerging and re-emerging infections, and vectors. An important element of the conference is mapping the intersections with the social sciences.
- Human and veterinary pathogens can spread across multiple host species and into the environment, creating complex and often poorly understood transmission networks or triggering evolutionary events that may lead to the emergence or re-emergence of new or neglected infectious diseases. These include foodborne, waterborne, and vector-borne diseases, as well as the hidden epidemic of antimicrobial resistance, all of which pose serious challenges to public health, the economy, and society and require urgent attention- stated Gábor Kardos, director of the One Health Institute at the University of Debrecen.
- One need only think of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which is still causing illness. It likely did not originate from a human source; it is not known exactly how or from which viruses it evolved, and the route by which it reached a human host also remains to be confirmed- Gábor Kardos also noted that infectious diseases very often appear in many places, and this is frequently linked to various changes occurring in nature; zoonotic diseases account for more than 70 percent of all human pathogens.
- Our interest in infectious diseases inevitably led us to the One Health concept and to regarding it as a tool that can be used to understand the dynamics and evolution of infectious diseases, as well as their epidemiology in both human and non-human populations- the institute director added.
During the three-day conference, participants attended professional presentations on topics including artificial intelligence-based applications available in the One Health field, as well as the tools and data integration required for One Health research. In addition, discussions covered the social factors, challenges, and innovations involved in implementing the One Health framework in human, animal, and environmental health, as well as the kinds of behavioral and cultural knowledge that can be utilized in disease prevention.
Press Center - BZ