Between July 2015 and February 2016, the Italian NGO Comitato Collaborazione Medica (CCM) implemented an operational research (OR) in the rural district of Filtu (Somali Region, Ethiopia) financed by the Swiss Development Cooperation and based on the One Health approach. The research aimed at conducting an in-depth ethnography of the needs, perceptions and behaviours of pastoralist communities in relation to health, sicknesses and human-animal interaction. Special attention was given to the socio-cultural, structural and economic hindrances preventing the access to existing healthcare and veterinary facilities. Moreover, the study reviewed the strategies of adaptation and resilience enacted by the pastoralists groups facing environmental, social and political transformations and conflicts.

The OR multidisciplinary team was coordinated by a social anthropologist and involved local and international staff, composed of cultural mediators, health workers, veterinarians, public health and environmental experts, applied meteorologists and geographers. The paper highlights the way in which the application of the ethnographic methodology and the anthropological perspective to fieldwork allowed integrating these plural scientific contributions with the community members' knowledge and experiences and building an interactive dialogue among research staff, local authorities and household members. The main result of the transdisciplinary and intercultural approach is the participatory identification of specific strategies of intervention, acknowledged and endorsed by the pastoralist communities, to enhance the health of humans and animals. Moving from these strategies, CCM is now developing a wider One Health project-line, finalized to promote a better and more sustainable human, animal and environmental health in its areas of intervention.

Protected areas, including national parks and reserves, and protected landscapes, have been established traditionally as an approach towards natural resource conservation. However, like many other major projects imposed by governments most protected areas, have been created through forced displacement of local communities, with tremendous consequences on both the community being displaced and the natural resources intended for conservation. With a specific focus on Nthongoni, a human-wildlife interface of Tsavo and Chyullu hills National parks in Eastern Kenya, this paper explores the forms of conflict that emerge in relation to establishment of protected areas, and how these shape the social, cultural and economic lives of people living at the borderlands of these areas. We also examine the implications on the health of people in the borderlands and beyond, particularly in regard to bush-meat consumption and trade. Finally we argue that government policies and the top-down approach adopted by park managers are a pediment to harmonious coexistence between wildlife and the communities entangled with it. For the promotion of conservation interventions that are both human and wildlife centered, we recommend for creation of an enabling environment that engages communities neighboring wildlife areas in generating new kinds of capital that translates into positive livelihood outcomes, and hence fostering an appreciation of the protected areas.

This paper has been developed in collaboration with Hannah Brown.

In a globalized context characterized by a high mobility of human beings and animal species, growing ecological concerns and the (re-)emergence of infectious diseases show that health problems should be tackled as a whole, taking into consideration medical and biological, but also social, cultural and political processes. The One health approach characterized by the human-animal-environment nexus is likely to bring responses to this complex whole and interconnectedness.

Based on the assumption that disease is a biocultural phenomenon and social factors generally play a crucial role in the emergence of disease, this contribution analyses human and environmental interactions related to the emergence of Buruli ulcer (BU), in endemic areas of Cote d'Ivoire. The contribution draws on research conducted since 2012 in four endemic health districts in southern and Central Côte d'Ivoire (Taabo, Daloa, Sinfra and Bouaké). It aims to highlight the interconnections between ecosystems, local knowledge, human activities and the emergence of Buruli ulcer. Specifically, it focuses on the ethno-ecological history of the emergence of Buruli ulcer as well as on domestic and socio-professional activities exposing populations to risks of contracting BU.

From the findings, we argue that a combination of social, ecological, demographic and economic factors such as poverty, migration patterns, environmental change or cessation of religious practices is critically important in the emergence of BU.

Finally, incorporating the social sciences into one health approaches can help address topics such as human-animal relations, environmental in the emergence of diseases in a better way than ever before.

This paper was developed in collaboration with Gilbert Fokou.

This paper draws on research on Lassa fever to explore how knowledge about disease and knowledge about animals shapes health systems infrastructure in global health. The paper explores the mutual constitution of health infrastructure and forms of ecological knowledge about the multimammate rat Mastomys Natalensis. M Natalensis is the rodent host of the Lassa fever, a viral haemorrhagic fever found in West Africa. Health systems infrastructure for managing Lassa fever in Sierra Leone has been profoundly shaped by the recent Ebola outbreak and the earlier Rebel war, each involving complex responses from development and research agencies. At the same these infrastructures have been shaped by scientific and lay forms of ecological knowledge about rat habitats and the location of the virus which have resulted in a highly targeted infrastructure - located primarily in the region around Sierra Leone's third city, Kenema.