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One Health in terms of collaboration, particularly between human and animal health sectors to prevent and
control zoonoses has been low while the sectors have a lot of things in common. Such common things include
aspects of disease causative agents (viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc.) and those of disease occurrence mediator
conditions (social, cultural, economic or climatic). Therefore, the research from which this paper is based was
done with the objectives to: (a) assess the extent to which human and animal health policies facilitate one health
in terms of collaboration; (b) rank opportunities for and challenges to collaboration among medical, and
veterinary officers according to the views and experiences of the respondents in the Ministry of Health and
Ministry of Agriculture; and (c) determine the attitude of the respondents towards One Health approaches in
terms of collaboration in dealing with zoonoses. A cross-sectional research design was used in this study
whereby data were collected at a single point in time without repetition. Purposive sampling method was used to
make sure that the respondents were only officials who usually participated in policy formulation in the two
Ministries. It was found that almost three quarters (73.1%) of the respondents from both ministries agreed that
there was no policy which directly facilitated One Health in terms of collaboration. It was also found that 83.6%
of the respondents pointed out that human and animal health policy making process was a top-down process.
Furthermore, it was found that the main opportunities that could enhance collaboration were sufficient money in
budgeting; advocacy for control of neglected zoonotic diseases in human and animal health; and one health
policy formulation (71.3%, 68.2% and 65.5% respectively). The overall attitude towards collaboration among
respondents was favourable; they scored an average of 62.2 out of 100.0 points on a Likert scale. It is concluded
that if opportunities enhancing collaboration were strengthened and challenges to collaboration were overcome,
human health and animal health experts could collaborate more in reduction of disease burden in both humans
and livestock. |
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