The One Health concept promotes a unified, integrated, systemic approach to public, animal and environmental health, notably in light of the development of potentially epidemic zoonotic diseases. Zoonoses are diseases and infections that are naturally transmissible from animals to humans.

With the One Health project, GRET and the Guinean entrepreneurs’ centre (MGE) are supporting households, villages and three municipal platforms in three rural communes with a population of 42,500 people in the prefecture of Nzérékoré, in Forest Guinea. The objective of the project is to take greater account of overall health issues in agricultural, food and natural resource management practices, in mechanisms for local governance and within spaces for multi-stakeholder dialogue.

The One Health project will be conducted over a period of three years. It is aligned with the “One health” National strategic plan (2019-2023), drawn up by the Guinean government following the 2015 Ebola epidemic, which was mainly concentrated in the area where the project is taking place.

A participative approach, aimed at overall health resilience

Together with the stakeholders concerned, GRET and MGE are using their knowledge of value chains that are prevalent in the project zone (rice, palm oil, pork) to explore related overall health issues.

Based on a multi-sectoral participative diagnosis in the three target municipalities and the value chains concerned, the project intends to build shared knowledge on the concrete links between public, animal and environmental health.

Subsequently, it will support stakeholders to collectively implement actions contributing to the improvement of overall health in the territory, and of their overall health resilience, while examining the appropriate level of decision-making. The gender dimension is included in the project.

Production of knowledge that will be shared

This innovative project also features a capitalisation process. The latter will document the choices made throughout the project. It will support reflections on the innovations contributed and on the conditions necessary for the implementation of the One Health approach at territorial level.

What are the innovative aspects of the project?

• The adaptation of the tool to provide advice to family farms to favour the inclusion of  One Health and gender issues in households’ decision-making.
• The promotion of agroecological production and processing techniques that respond effectively to the challenges of ecosystemic, animal and human health.
• The uses of tools to plan and monitor use of land and resources through a commons-based approach to ensure integration of the One Health principles by village terroir management committees.
• The search for innovative sustainable funding strategies for municipal One Health platforms.
• Constant dialogue to ensure effective representativeness of women within platforms.