08 Action track 2 of South Africa’s One Health Implementation Framework highlights the following priorities: The prevention of spillover events needs to be prioritised. The lack of focus on spillover prevention is a major gap for both the pandemic instrument and effective One Health implementation. To improve zoonotic disease coordination, integrated plans, guidelines, standard operating procedures and training with multiple stakeholders need to be developed. An avian influenza simulation exercise will be conducted to help identify gaps in One Health collaboration, communication and response. Addressing human resources gaps for One Health implementation is a priority. Currently, there are no dedicated One Health human resources at the national departments of Health, Agriculture, and Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. A mapping exercise is required to develop a database of expertise, infrastructure and capacity that the One Health network can draw on. While South Africa has strong laboratory and surveillance capacities in human and animal health sectors, an interoperable, integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR) platform is lacking. As such, the National Action Plan for Health Security surveillance technical area is prioritising the implementation of an IDSR, including an electronic IDSR platform, through the national Department of Health. An algorithm is required for triggering earlywarning responses linked to One Health surveillance, especially for novel, emerging and re-emerging diseases. There is strong academic research and surveillance initiatives on novel, emerging and reemerging zoonoses in high-risk source hosts, yet there is no platform for sharing information with relevant government authorities. This needs to be addressed with the government and academia to ensure that findings are taken into account during policy development. A revision of the Zoonotic Disease Prioritisation list of 2016 has been identified as a priority. This article was reviewed by Jacqueline Weyer, Wayne Ramkrishna, Andronica Moipone Shonhiwa and Yemi Akerele Read more about the author: Alicia Cloete
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