During the strategic planning process, stakeholders assessed the existing strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, including those affecting the One Health Coordination Platform specifically, multisectoral efforts in general, and sector-specific areas of laboratory, surveillance, preparedness and response, and capacity building. This critical review of the One Health approach in the context of Liberia led to…
The One Health concept is mandatory to achieve optimal public health outcomes at the global, national, regional, and local levels in its collaborative, multisectoral, and interdisciplinary approach. Systems have critical and clear relevance to the goals of One Health. With the support of coordination, collaboration, and communication of the human-animal-environment interface, the One Health agenda aims to address shared public health threats created by zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food safety, industrial hazards, and others.
In June 2017, the Vice-President of the Republic of Liberia officially launched the country’s One Health Coordination Platform (OHCP) with the purpose of productively facilitating cross-sectoral collaboration to address public health issues that cannot be solved by a single sector alone. In Liberia, it is recognized that investment in One Health will promote efficient alignment of limited human, financial and material resources.
With the adoption of IHR (2005) Liberia has been reporting Public Health Events of International Concern (PHEIC) to the World Health Organization (WHO). One such event was the unprecedented outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in 2014. The IHR (2005) confers obligations to Member States to annually self-report the progress of the implementation to the World Health Assembly (WHA). Following the EVD outbreak, the WHA recommended countries to shift from exclusive self-assessment to a strategy of all-inclusive internal assessment and Joint External Evaluation (JEE) followed by the development and implementation of a National Action Plan for Public Health Security (NAPHS
