One World, One Health

One Health Trust
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One World, One Health is brought to you by the One Health Trust. In this podcast, we bring you the latest ideas to improve the health of our planet and its people. Our world faces many urgent challenges from pandemics and decreasing biodiversity to pollution and melting polar ice caps, among others. This podcast highlights solutions to these problems from the scientists and experts working to make a difference.

  1. If Governments Aren't Doing Enough to Fight Climate Change, Who Else Can?

    5D AGO

    If Governments Aren't Doing Enough to Fight Climate Change, Who Else Can?

    Send us a text A new report on health and climate change paints the grimmest picture yet about what’s going on – not just that 2024 was the hottest year on record, but evidence that many governments have stopped even pretending to try to do anything about it. The 2025 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change finds that more than half a million people die every year from heat-related causes, up 23 percent since the 1990s. Air pollution just from wildfire smoke was linked to 154,000 deaths in 2024. And 2.5 million people die every year because of the continued burning of fossil fuels, the report says. But Dr. Tafadzwa Mabhaudhi, Professor of Climate Change, Food Systems, and Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Director of the Lancet Countdown in Africa, says it’s not all bad news. Communities, people acting in groups, city governments, and others can make a difference. “We do have the power,” says Tafadzwa, who joins One World, One Health host Maggie Fox in this episode to talk about the report and what he sees for the future. African nations, especially, have the opportunity to show the way as they build cities that take advantage of clean energy, says Tafadzwa, who is also a professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Future Africa, at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The report finds hope in this trend, and estimates 160,000 lives are being saved annually as communities shift away from coal and enjoy cleaner air. Listen as Tafadzwa describes some of the successes in fighting climate change and what people and communities can do to encourage their governments to act.

    18 min
  2. Protect Land Rights, Save Forests, Save Lives, Too

    OCT 14

    Protect Land Rights, Save Forests, Save Lives, Too

    Send us a text Of course, saving forests is good for the animals that live there and the environment. But saving forests where indigenous people live can have another surprising benefit. It can be good for the health of all of the people who live throughout the region, researchers have found. That benefit seems to come not just because forests are healthier ecosystems in general, but because indigenous people are good at taking care of them, a new study showed. Burning forests can cause heart disease, lung disease, skin conditions, and kill hundreds of thousands of people a year, according to numerous estimates. Destroying forests spreads out insects that carry malaria, yellow fever, and other infections that sicken and kill people. Dr. Júlia Rodrigues Barreto of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo in Brazil; Dr. Ana Filipa Palmeirim of the Federal University of Pará, Brazil and Université Libre de Bruxelles; and colleagues wanted to see if protection of indigenous land had an effect on health. They looked at 20 years of data from the Amazon, which reaches into 9 South American countries and is the most biodiverse region on the planet. As with everything involving biology, the picture is complicated. But if at least 45 percent of the forest cover was preserved in an indigenous territory – an area preserved for the people who originally lived there – nearby areas reported fewer diseases caused by fires, as well as vector-borne diseases such as malaria that are spread by insects. They reported their findings in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as they discuss what they found and what it could mean for everyone on the planet.

    17 min
  3. A Viral Surprise at a Bat Cave

    SEP 30

    A Viral Surprise at a Bat Cave

    Send us a text Bats can carry several viruses that can kills humans. Some well understood – rabies, the deadliest virus of all, is transmitted directly from bats to people from bat bites. Other viruses, such as Hendra virus, are a little more mysterious and indirect in how they spread. And researchers are still unsure how viruses such as Ebola, Marburg and the coronavirus that caused Covid-19 get from bats to people. However, a team working in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda may have just gotten a big clue. Bosco Atukwatse, a Ugandan wildlife biologist working with the Kyambura Lion Project, set up solar-powered cameras near the mouth of Python Cave in the Maramagambo Forest in the park. He knew the cave was home to multitudes of Egyptian fruit bats and was hoping for pictures of leopards and spotted hyenas. What he got were dozens of images of animals hunting the bats. Birds, snakes, giant lizards called monitors, a very persistent leopard, monkeys, baboons, and a catlike animal called a genet all regularly hunted in the cave. This behavior was notable on its own. But the bats in this cave are also known to be infected with Marburg virus, a rare but deadly virus that can cause a hemorrhagic fever. Two visitors to the cave had been infected with Marburg, including a Dutch tourist who died in 2008 and a U.S. tourist. The findings don’t prove that animals who hunt bats are spreading Marburg, says Dr. Alex Braczkowski, Science Director of the Kyambura Lion Project, who reported the discovery on the open repository site Zenodo. They do, however, provide a starting point for possible further investigations. Listen as Alex and Bosco chat with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about the bats, the animals that hunt them, and what it all might mean.

    16 min
  4. An Unknown Burden – Drug resistance and lab capacity in Africa

    SEP 17

    An Unknown Burden – Drug resistance and lab capacity in Africa

    Send us a text Drug-resistant germs are hidden killers in more than one way. Not only are the microbes invisible to the human eye, in many places, they’re invisible because people simply are not looking for them systematically. Doctors often do not know what infections their patients have and treat them based on best guesses, which allows for ineffective treatments and exacerbates drug resistance. Policymakers don’t know which infections are most common among populations and cannot make informed decisions about needed treatments or vaccines. This is a major problem across Africa and a new report shows just how complex the problem is. The Mapping AMR and Antimicrobial use Partnership (MAAP), which included the One Health Trust as well as the African Society for Laboratory Medicine; Africa CDC; the East, Central, and Southern Africa Health Community; Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters, a nonprofit focused on technology and communication;  the clinical research group IQVIA; and the West African Health Organization, collected data from laboratories from 14 countries in Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Eswatini, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). “The study revealed significant gaps in bacteriology testing capacities,” the group, whose work was paid for by the UK government's Fleming Fund, wrote in PLoS Medicine. It's the biggest survey yet of testing for antimicrobial resistance – AMR or drug resistance – in Africa. Among the gaps: too little testing overall, a lack of laboratory capacities, and poor coordination and analysis of records. Many records were kept only on paper, which made them almost impossible to access. None of this surprises Dr. Sabiha Essack, South African Research Chair in Antibiotic Resistance and One Health and Professor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.  In an ideal world, she says, a doctor, nurse or other professional should see a patient, test them to see what specific microbe is causing an infection, check to see which drugs will successfully fight that germ, and then treat the patient accordingly. Cheap point-of-care tests should be available everywhere and the results of those tests should be entered into systems that officials can use to make policy decisions, she says. Listen as she tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox other ways to improve our knowledge about the drug-resistant infections that lurk out there.  Want to know more? You can find One World, One Health episodes on drug-resistant infections in cancer patients; superbugs and microplastics; the personal toll of antibiotic resistance; one woman’s antibiotic resistance nightmare; how to prevent drug resistance, and more.

    18 min
  5. The Invisible Second Threat to Cancer Patients – Drug-Resistant Infections

    JUL 1

    The Invisible Second Threat to Cancer Patients – Drug-Resistant Infections

    Send us a text It’s a common scenario for a cancer patient. They’re undergoing treatment and get what’s known as a peripherally inserted central catheter or PICC (pronounced “pick”) line to make it more convenient to administer drugs. They are in and out of the hospital or just the clinic frequently to see various providers. The treatment they receive may run down their immune system a little bit. Just having cancer may have damaged their immune system. So then they get an infection. Perhaps it’s no big deal. A round of antibiotics may take care of it. However, increasingly, these infections are resistant to antibiotics – something known as antimicrobial resistance or AMR. Then, the patient must wait weeks or even months to resume cancer treatment while the infection is treated. And, all too often, the infection itself may kill the patient. In fact, infections are the second-leading cause of death for cancer patients. Dr. Yehoda M. Martei, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology-Oncology) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues have been working to find out just how common these infections are. Among patients hospitalized for treatment, cancer patients were up to twice as likely to get a drug-resistant infection, she and colleagues found. Among outpatients – people getting treatment at clinics or offices but not staying in the hospital – cancer patients had three times the risk of drug-resistant infections. Listen as Dr. Martei tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about her findings, what they mean, and what must be done to protect cancer patients and ensure infections don't stop them from getting the treatment they need.

    17 min
  6. When Fear Spreads Faster Than Facts – Autism, Vaccines, and Measles

    JUN 17

    When Fear Spreads Faster Than Facts – Autism, Vaccines, and Measles

    Send us a text It’s a really bad year for measles. Cases are spiking in countries where children should have been fully vaccinated, such as the United States, Canada, and Mexico. More than 1,000 cases have been reported in the United States just in the first half of 2025, with at least 3 deaths. The death of a child in Texas early in 2025 was the first time a child had died from the infection in the United States since 2003. It’s even worse in Canada, with more than 2,500 reported cases.  Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, thanks to vaccination, but this very infectious virus has come roaring back because of a decline in vaccination. The decline is overwhelmingly linked to fears and false rumors about vaccines – especially the hard-to-kill notion that the measles vaccine might somehow cause autism. Now, one of the leading proponents of this thoroughly disproven idea, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and he’s bent on both casting more doubt on vaccines, and on renewing fears about autism. He got more ammunition in the spring of 2025 with the latest surveillance report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that about 1 in 31, or 3.2 percent, of children aged 8 years old has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. This is up from 1 in 36 in 2020 and 1 in 54 in 2008. Kennedy has called for collecting more data on people with autism while also shedding even more doubt on the safety of vaccines in general. The CDC itself still says vaccines do not cause autism, but Kennedy, widely blamed for stoking vaccine hesitancy that helped fuel an outbreak of measles in Samoa in 2019 that killed 83 people, is in a position to further weaken vaccination efforts while spreading misinformation about autism. “It takes 10 minutes to create a vaccine scare and at least 10 years to overcome it,” says Dr. Judith S. Miller, a psychologist in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a senior scientist and training director in the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Better screening and broader criteria are likely the main reason autism diagnoses are on the rise, says Dr. Miller, who is also Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Listen as Dr. Miller discusses why it’s a waste of time to re-examine the disproven links between vaccines and autism, why establishing new government databases may actually hold back research, and what autism professionals really need from the federal government.

    15 min
  7. Cut Deep – What's at stake in the gutting of U.S. biodefense?

    MAY 27

    Cut Deep – What's at stake in the gutting of U.S. biodefense?

    Send us a text Zombie movies may score at the box office and shows about dangerous contagions including “The Last of Us” may be a hit on streaming services, but preparedness for disasters is no winner for American politicians.  Every recent U.S. presidential administration has dismantled the pandemic plan put together by the previous one, notes Dr. Asha M. George, Executive Director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. However, the cuts being made by the new Trump administration to the United States biodefense budget are going deeper than ever before. Global efforts to track diseases including Ebola virus and avian influenza have ended.  Among the latest to fall under the axe: the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC), a federal advisory body to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which had helped shape national infection prevention guidelines meant to keep hospitals safe and contain outbreaks.  The loss of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, has already begun devastating not only global health efforts, but also U.S. national security efforts, multiple experts say.  And things were not in a good place to begin with, says George. “The biodefense community is in for the fight of its life to get the funding it needs,” she said in her latest report on biodefense. “It was starving before. It is going to be anorexic soon.”  Listen as George explains to One World, One Health host Maggie Fox just what’s at risk for the world if the United States doesn’t start paying attention to biodefense.

    19 min
  8. From Seals to People – What H5N1 in Patagonia Foretells

    MAY 13

    From Seals to People – What H5N1 in Patagonia Foretells

    Send us a text The scene on the beach was horrific. Thousands of mothers and baby elephant seals lay in the sand, taken out by a deadly virus. Dr. Marcela Uhart and her colleagues were shocked by what they found after the H5N1 avian influenza virus swept through a colony of elephant seals on the coast of Argentina’s far south Patagonia region. More than 17,000 of the animals had died, their bodies ravaged by the virus. H5N1 bird flu has swept around the world, destroying poultry flocks and wildlife. Like other influenza viruses, it mutates constantly and swaps genetic material in a process called reassortment. It can now infect not just birds, but livestock such as cattle and sheep as well as mink, pet cats, sea lions, and human beings. It has devastated egg production and threatens dairy operations. The biggest fear is that it will acquire both the ability to spread from human to human and maintain its most deadly qualities. An H5N1 pandemic has the potential to be much, much worse than Covid-19 was. People can’t be ready for the virus unless the world keeps an eye on it. That’s what Uhart, who is Director of the Latin America Program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis, is trying to do. That’s why her team studied the bodies of the dead elephant seals and other animals killed by the virus. “Mammal-to-mammal transmission could be a stepping-stone in the evolutionary pathway for these viruses to become capable of human-to-human transmission,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature. “What we can learn from what happens in wildlife is crucial,” Uhart says. “That is where these viruses evolve.” Listen as Uhart chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about what her team discovered in Patagonia and what it might mean for every animal on the planet, including  humans. And listen to our other podcast episodes looking at H5N1 bird flu and how we should be preparing for the next pandemic.

    21 min
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Ratings & Reviews

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out of 5
11 Ratings

About

One World, One Health is brought to you by the One Health Trust. In this podcast, we bring you the latest ideas to improve the health of our planet and its people. Our world faces many urgent challenges from pandemics and decreasing biodiversity to pollution and melting polar ice caps, among others. This podcast highlights solutions to these problems from the scientists and experts working to make a difference.

Information

  • Creator
    One Health Trust
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 One World, One Health
  • Show Website
    One World, One Health

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