One Health projects globally : - a literature overview of scientific publications regarding zoonotic diseases and animal welfare

Abstract: The concept of One Health is a rather new term that is used to describe the need for collaboration across expert disciplines to ensure health for humans, animals and the environment. The concept of One Health covers many different aspects of problems that pose a threat to a sustainable planet, for example zoonotic diseases, food hygiene, antibiotic resistance and animal welfare. In recent years the interest in One Health issues has expanded in a truly amazing way, therefore, it is in our interest to present an overview of One Health projects globally, regarding the topics of zoonotic diseases and animal welfare. The aim of this literature study is to conduct an overview of published studies, in the areas of zoonotic diseases and animal welfare, from geographically distinct parts of the world, including Europe, Middle East, South America, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. This will be done by answering questions regarding the analysed publications, to explore similarities and differences between the previously mentioned geographic areas, regarding the two topics of interest. PubMed was used as search engine to identify publications suitable for the aim of this literature overview. 178 publications within the area of zoonotic diseases and 139 publications within the area of animal welfare met the inclusion criteria and were analysed and evaluated according to a question-sheet. Cross-border collaborations appeared to be more common in the field of zoonotic diseases than in the field of animal welfare. Looking at the amount of published papers, there seemed to be an elevation in number of publications focusing on zoonotic diseases from the time interval 2012-2013 to 2014-2015, in contrast to animal welfare, where the publication numbers increased some years later, from 2014-2015 to 2016-2017. Sub-Saharan African and South American publications focused more on vector borne diseases than the other investigated geographic areas. Regarding the most common cause of animal welfare issues, it appeared to be housing and human management in all investigated geographical demarcations.