Practice of one health approaches: bridges and barriers in Tanzania
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Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS
Abstract
The practice of One Health approaches in human and animal health programmes is influenced
by type and scope of bridges for and barriers to partnerships. It was thus essential to evaluate
the nature and scope of collaborative arrangements among human, animal and wildlife health
experts in dealing with health challenges which demand intersectoral partnership. The nature
of collaborative arrangement was assessed, and the respective bridges and barriers over a
period of 12 months (July 2011 – June 2012) were identified. The specific objectives were to:
(1) determine the proportions of health experts who had collaborated with other experts of
disciplines different from theirs, (2) rank the general bridges for and barriers to collaboration
according to the views of the health experts, and (3) find the actual bridges for and barriers to
collaboration among the health experts interviewed. It was found that 27.0% of animal health
officers interviewed had collaborated with medical officers while 12.4% of medical officers
interviewed had collaborated with animal health experts. Only 6.7% of the wildlife officers had
collaborated with animal health experts. The main bridges for collaboration were instruction
by upper level leaders, zoonotic diseases of serious impact and availability of funding. The
main barriers to collaboration were lack of knowledge about animal or human health issues,
lack of networks for collaboration and lack of plans to collaborate. This situation calls for
the need to curb barriers in order to enhance intersectoral collaboration for more effective
management of risks attributable to infectious diseases of humans and animals.
Description
Proceedings of the 2nd One Health Conference in Africa. Jointly organised by the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease
Surveillance and the Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research, held at the Snow Crest Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania from 16th to 19th
April 2013:
Keywords
Bridges-barriers, Tanzania, Animal health programmes, Wildlife health challenges, One health approaches