by Lauryn Dominick
It is common knowledge that everything is interlinked, meaning that circumstances are created by chain reactions. When an oil spill occurs, not only does this affect the fish in the ocean and the fishing industry, but it affects the amount of food that can be put on your table, which could ultimately affect your health. This broad approach is known as “One Health.” This approach is founded on how humans, the environment, and animals affect one another’s health; each global region varies in how One Health is implemented Africa’s version of One Health is especially different because of the way it has been affected by colonialism and present-day biases. African public health is a major concern, accelerated by conflicts between an expanded, modern, African civilization and the natural environment. One Health in Africa is in many ways starkly different from other continents from a cultural point of view. Colonialism has affected the way native Africans and the environment interact with one another due to cultural and political impacts.
The idea of One Health is that it is an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, and research in which multiple sectors of health work together to better one another. This specifically includes the health of people, the environment, and animals. This approach to multiple sectors of health is important to understand in order to establish a sustainable way of living. If the wellbeing of one is failing, the rest will begin to fail as they are interdependent. The best way to avoid this is to be educated on each independent component and to be proactive, but this is applied differently in each continent or even in each country. The government, types of wildlife, and culture play a role in how policies are implemented. This especially applies to Africa, however, as it is highly affected by outside influences, especially from the West. Colonialism is much to blame for this: colonialism affected Africa’s view on One Health in the sense that Africa is now viewed as primal due to setbacks caused by colonial influences. When the colonial period began, ships arrived on the western coasts and were greeted with jungles and people living in huts. What they saw automatically established the idea that these people were uncivilized, or at least compared to European standards. This first perception and the following interactions between native Africans and colonizers have affected future generations of Africans.
Because of the colonial era, Africa is still viewed as an entire continent that is behind on the times and needs our help. This is further influenced by the media and what we read in our history books, where we see Africa as a subterranean jungle with people who are one with nature. Meanwhile, it is simply not true. Africa, like every other continent, has its fair share of agricultural regions, cities, rural communities, and forests. However, because they are seen as a continent that is overall struggling to provide basic needs, Africa as a whole continues to struggle with development, accelerated by Western tourism who view Africa as a backwards continent. This is where One Health becomes more prevalent, especially concerning how agriculture and the environment interact, ultimately affecting the health of humans. There are two specific examples regarding the interactions between wildlife and agriculture involving monkeys and elephants. Fields that yield crops and are close to forests pose an exceptional risk to human health. Because forests and fields border one another, the probability of monkeys interacting with the crops, humans and farm animals is greater, creating a larger potential risk for diseases like ebola and AIDS. Yellow fever is another shared disease, causing hemorrhaging in the liver, brain, lungs, and gut.
Monkeys pose the greatest risk to health because humans are a primate, meaning that we share some of the same diseases as monkeys due to our biological makeup. The transmission of a disease from one species to another is known as zoonosis. This is a big issue because monkeys live in conservation areas, which are simultaneously seen as emerging disease hotspots because of the proximity to farmlands. Forests like Kibale are of particular concern because it is not just one large park: the national park consists of fragmented forests, each of which is surrounded by agriculture fields, increasing the risk of emerging diseases. Farmers have tried deterring the monkeys from eating or otherwise damaging their crops by performing maize daubing, an act of coating corn with cattle dung, sand, and hot pepper. Although this is meant to be a deterrent, it has also acted as an enhancement of the occurrence of giardia and cryptosporidium, two infectious parasites that reside in the intestines of animals, specifically their cattle. Another way of decreasing the interactions between wild animals and farmlands is by planting tea along the borders of the forest as a buffer. Animals don’t eat tea, but it is considered to be a “rich man’s crop” because it takes 4-5 years to harvest and a majority of the people who have farms bordering forests are impoverished. Further, farmers have to encounter elephants, which begins to largely involve Western countries, dating back to when colonists first arrived in Africa.
When colonists first landed on the western coasts of Africa, they were met with extensive forests and small plots of land owned by people who farmed them. Almost immediately following their arrival, the colonists seized their land and claimed ownership of it as well as the wildlife. They also firmly established the idea that developed lands should be completely separate from the forests. This meant clearing the trees and shrubbery, displacing animals, and increasing their interactions with humans as well as the emergence of new diseases. This affirmative action of creating a strict barrier also involved the mass killing of elephants because they cause a lot of damage to crops. Once this was accomplished, commercial crops like tea were planted, which had little to no value for the people who originally inhabited the region. The actions of colonizers affect the people of present-day Africa because they have learned these behaviors of killing off pests, which happen to include elephants. However, now elephants are seen as majestic creatures that must be protected. This mindset is what caused elephants to be seen as a “white man’s animal.” The sudden change of ideology in Western countries from colonizers killing elephants for agricultural growth to preventing Africans from killing elephants for the same reason is just another example of privilege and hypocrisy. Farmers in countries like Uganda still feel the aftermath of colonialism, even after independence.
A lot of anger has been projected onto conservationists that specifically work to protect elephants because of how negatively they affect farmer’s livelihoods. Programs like CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources) consider animals as a renewable natural resource and they encourage hunting elephants as a way to control the burden while also benefiting the community. The money that people pay to hunt animals through CAMPFIRE is then redistributed to schools and clinics. However, in the past decade poaching has become more common and community profits have decreased due to corruption within the program. There is a constant search for solving the issues in Africa regarding the barrier between wildlife and civilization, as well as the health effects that the environment poses on humanity.
The main dilemma with the search for a solution is to still find a balance between protecting human, animal, and environmental health. One Health is an approach that aims to not only educate communities on how to be proactive with their actions but also how to support programs and policies. In Africa specifically, programs aim to benefit the surrounding community while also promoting solutions to problems introduced by the environment. The efforts that are being made not only benefit the wellbeing of surrounding communities but the health of the planet. Research in developed areas that border forests is important to help expand the understanding of how to avoid health risks. It has also helped benefit the people who live in these areas and to find their ways to thrive while not negatively affecting the environment. The survival of African people is largely dependent on utilizing natural resources the same way they were utilized before colonization. The health of humanity and the natural environment are equally important which is why we must dedicate our time and energy to protecting and bettering it.
References
Bulletin of Epizootic diseases of Africa, v4:4, (Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara, 1956), 317
B. Paige, Sarah, et al. Uncovering zoonoses awareness in an emerging disease “hotspot”(Elsevier Ltd. 2014), 79
Goldeberg, Tony, One Health in Uganda, powerpoint, Madison, April 14, 2020
Naughton, Lisa, Living with Elephants: A View from Kibale National Park, Uganda, powerpoint, Madison, April 16, 2020
Flavia Nakabuye, Hilda My generation is fighting to keep Africa green (2019) https://africasacountry.com/2020/03/my-generation-is-fighting-to-keep-africa-green