One World, One Health One Health Trust

Three full years into the COVID-19 pandemic and the world still doesn’t have a firm answer about where the virus came from.
People who have been studying coronaviruses and other viruses for decades say it’s overwhelmingly likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from animals, just as the 2002-2004 SARS virus did, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS virus did, as Ebola does, and as most influenza viruses do.


But there’s no smoking gun- no animal being sold for food that carries the virus and that could conceivably have been the source of the pandemic. And that makes people suspicious and leads to speculation that a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China could have been the source.

Dr. Felicia Goodrum, professor of immunobiology at the University of Arizona and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Virology, argues that the tone of the current debate is harmful and undermines trust in science.

“The result has fueled public confusion and, in many instances, ill-informed condemnation of virology. With this article, we seek to promote a return to rational discourse,” she and colleagues wrote in a recent commentary in the Journal of Virology.


“COVID-19 has cast a harsh light on the many cracks, fissures, and disparities in our public health system, and the inability to broadly come together to face a colossal crisis and focus on the needs of the most vulnerable,” they wrote.

Listen as Dr. Goodrum tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about what’s at stake.

Just about everyone has had an unpleasant fungal encounter, usually something as simple as athlete’s foot, ringworm, or dandruff.
But fungal infections can become much more dangerous and even deadly, especially in people whose immune systems are damaged by another infection such as HIV, tuberculosis, or even COVID-19.

Mold species such as aspergillus are in the air all the time and when breathed in by someone whose immune system is damaged, they can cause an infection known as aspergillosis. Another infection, candida auris, spreads in hospitals and can kill. More than 300 million people have such infections and 1.5 million die from them, according to recent estimates.


In this episode, Dr. David Denning, a retired professor of infectious diseases, global health, and medical mycology at Wythenshawe Hospital and the University of Manchester, chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about the threat of fungal diseases, especially as people alter their environments.


Denning is the founding president, executive director, and chief executive of Global Action For Fungal Infections (GAFFI), which focuses on the global impact of fungal disease.


Listen as Dr. Denning describes the need for new, resistance-busting medications to fight fungal infections, better testing to diagnose them, and better awareness of the threat.

Helping someone less fortunate feels good, right?  But when people from rich countries show up in low- and middle-income countries dispensing goodwill and largesse, their efforts may, at best, be too little and, at worst, could do harm. Dr. Kirk Scirto, a family practice physician in Buffalo, New York, has devoted more than two decades to trying to help others through global health promotion and studying which methods are best for that work. 
What he’s found may surprise many people. In his book, Doing Global Health Work, he describes how he found it’s more important to listen to people than to try to tell them what to do. In some of the poorest parts of the world, he’s witnessed that people are perfectly able to help themselves and they have a better understanding of what they need than outside "do-gooders."


In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Scirto tells host Maggie Fox what he’s learned about suitcase medicine and voluntourism and how he’s working to help others make a positive impact without doing harm.

When salty water seeps into a freshwater swamp, the resident alligators risk getting sick and have to fend off invading sharks. Can a monkey scientist and a pirate cat help solve the conflict?
Dr. Susannah Sandrin, Clinical Professor in Environmental Science & Science Education at Arizona State University helped make sure the science was sound in this episode of the cartoon series The Octonauts: Above & Beyond. It’s aimed at young children, but Sandrin says it’s important to communicate accurate science to everyone if people are ever to come to grips with the inevitable effects of climate change.


Plus, “Everyone responds to goofiness,” Susie says as she chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about her work studying hydrology – the science of water – and studying how best to communicate climate science to kids and adults of all ages.

Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide, killing tens of millions of people every year. COVID-19 alone has killed more than 6.8 million people, according to Johns Hopkins University. Drug-resistant superbugs directly kill 1.27 million people a year, according to one recent prominent study.
Surely drug companies are all over this potentially lucrative market, with so many diseases to fight and treat?  However, they aren’t. The US Food and Drug Administration has not approved a new antibiotic since 2019, and only one truly new antibiotic has been approved since 1987.


It’s partly because the money just isn’t there. Companies making cancer drugs raised about $7 billion in funding in 2020, while companies making antibiotics raised a fraction of that – just $160 million. Plus, it’s hard to bring a new drug to market. The National Institutes of Health estimates 90% of experimental drugs never even make it to testing in humans.


In this episode, we are chatting with Kevin Outterson, a professor of law at Boston University and the founding Executive Director and Principal Investigator of Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator or CARB-X, a global nonprofit partnership funded by the U.S., U.K., and German governments; Wellcome; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


Professor Outterson argues that antibiotics should be treated as infrastructure, and companies making new drugs to fight antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, viruses, and fungi –often called superbugs – should be treated as vital government contractors and paid upfront for the work they do that could save tens of millions of lives. Listen as he describes the problem, and potential solutions, with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox.

Lemurs are cute and interesting, and they live in only one place: Madagascar.  As primates, they are related to humans, monkeys, and apes. They are also endangered. 
Dr. Travis Steffens has wanted to help save lemurs since he was a little boy. On the way to living that dream, he found out that he couldn’t save these animals without also helping the people and the environment. His charity, Planet Madagascar,  works to save lemurs and improve the lives of people who live with and near them.


In this episode, host Maggie Fox chats with Dr. Steffens, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Listen as he describes how lemurs are more than just adorable animals.