Scaling up implementation of One Health approach in Kenya: overcoming the bottlenecks

Abstract

One Health is defined as a collaborative, multi-sectoral, and trans-disciplinary approach, working at the local, regional, national, and global levels with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes for people, animals, plants, and the environment they share. It is the recommended approach to managing threats of public health importance as this comprehensive approach has been shown to achieve the best health outcomes. From time to time, Kenya like many other countries is faced with a number of One Health issues including zoonotic diseases; antimicrobial resistance; food safety and food security; vector-borne diseases; environmental contamination and others whose effective management requires a One Health approach. Given this, Kenya established a One Health Institutional Framework by setting up a National One Health office in 2012 – bringing together two key ministries responsible for public health and animal health to promote and coordinate multi-sectoral disease surveillance and outbreak response activities between these two ministries and other key stakeholders, at both the national and sub-national levels. Since its institutionalization in Kenya, One Health was has been driven by collaborations and partnerships between local One Health stakeholders and partner institutions in research, training and community engagements - focusing on One Health issues especially zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance and food safety. Numerous partners (United States Agency for International Development [USAID], Centres for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], Global Health Security Agenda [GHSA], among others), local One Health stakeholders including One Health Central and Eastern Africa (OHCEA) and now Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN), have helped in the implementation of the One Health Approach in the country in the last decade. Whereas the country has made appreciable strides in implementing the One Health approach especially in enhancing One health institutional and workforce capacity and Institutional collaborative research on key zoonoses, strengthening surveillance systems for early detection of zoonoses, and development of a One Health strategic plan for the country, it is the position of some stakeholders that the pace of implementation of the approach is not commensurate with trends in emergence of threats of public health importance. And here, lies the basis for this policy synthesis.