Geneva Principles for One Health: Turning commitments into action against pandemics

Editor's Note: The 79th World Health Assembly (WHA) is being held in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 18 to 23. This article presents insights from experts Zhou Xiaonong, chief scientist on parasitic disease control at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Huan Shitong, senior advisor at the Global Development and Health Communication Center of Tsinghua University, from a side event on improving global public health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern over an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on May 17. Caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a strain with no licensed vaccine or specific treatment, the outbreak has already claimed more than 140 lives, with over 570 suspected cases, and has spilled across borders into Uganda, threatening to destabilize an already fragile region.

Just weeks earlier, a cluster of hantavirus infections aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius sent shockwaves around the globe. Linked to the Andes strain, the outbreak killed three people and infected 11 passengers and crew, triggering multi-country contact tracing as travelers dispersed worldwide.

These dual crises, one unfolding in a remote, conflict-affected region and the other on a globalized vessel carrying international tourists, are not isolated incidents. They are the latest warning signs that our fragmented health governance is no longer fit for purpose.

That warning was answered on May 19 at the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva. The Chinese Preventive Medicine Association (CPMA) and the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) jointly convened a landmark side event titled "One Health for All to Improve Global Public Health." The centerpiece of the session was the adoption of the Geneva Principles for One Health Implementation, a document that may come to be seen as a watershed moment. The principles declare that human, animal and environmental health form "a single, indivisible system" and demand mandatory, institutionalized collaboration across health, agriculture, environment, water and food systems at all levels of governance.

As WHO Chief Scientist Sylvie Briand stressed during the session: "One Health provides us with a new way to solve complex health problems. It is the only framework that allows us to tackle emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance and climate-sensitive diseases together."

Emmanuelle Soubeyran, director-general of the World Organisation for Animal Health, echoed this urgency, noting: "Health security begins with prevention and prevention requires sustained investment in integrated One Health systems."

For too long, health governance has operated in silos: human health under ministries of health, animal health under agriculture and environmental protection under separate agencies. This fragmentation has created a persistent "know-do gap," as highlighted by the Global One Health Index 2025, developed by the School of Global Health at the Chinese Center for Tropical Diseases Research of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and led by Zhou Xiaonong.

While global consensus on the value of One Health is nearly universal, the index reveals that implementation lags far behind. Median action scores stand at just 41.05 compared with outcome scores of 72.51. In other words, we know what to do, but we are failing to do it. The DRC Ebola outbreak is a perfect case in point. Deforestation and habitat encroachment in Ituri Province have brought humans into closer contact with wildlife reservoirs of the virus, creating the conditions for spillover. A One Health approach would have integrated wildlife surveillance, community education and cross-border monitoring to detect the threat before it became an epidemic.

Similarly, the cruise-ship hantavirus outbreak exposed gaps in global surveillance systems. The virus, which originates from rodent populations in South America, was able to spread undetected across borders because we failed to integrate animal and environmental health data into travel health protocols. We were left reacting to cases after they appeared rather than preventing spillover in the first place.

The Geneva Principles, adopted at the WHA side event, aim to close this gap by mandating institutionalized cross-sectoral collaboration, equitable capacity building for low- and middle-income countries and measurable accountability mechanisms. The quadripartite partners – the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health, WHO and the United Nations Environment Programme – have already laid out a joint plan of action, but we must move beyond political commitments to tangible, local action. This means investing in cross-sectoral surveillance networks, training local workforces and restructuring incentives to break down sectoral silos.

The era of treating human health as an island is over. The Ebola outbreak in DRC, the hantavirus cluster on the cruise ship and the silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance all carry the same warning: we cannot afford to treat the symptoms of these crises while ignoring their root causes. One Health is not an optional extra – it is an existential necessity. As we move forward from the WHA, we must turn the Geneva Principles into action, closing the know-do gap and building a world where human, animal and environmental health are protected as one. Only then can we hope to face the next pandemic before it starts.