WOAH took part in the 9th World One Health Congress in Lisbon (September 4–7, 2026) and called for moving from declarations to national implementation of the quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action, with prevention at its core.
The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) took part in the 9th World One Health Congress, held in Lisbon from September 4 to 7, 2026, with a call to launch a new phase of implementation of the approach focused on prevention and on achieving lasting changes in countries and communities.
During the opening ceremony, Director General Dr. Emmanuelle Soubeyran urged that the approach go beyond declarations and become a shared practice in the face of threats such as food insecurity, climate change, biodiversity loss and geopolitical instability. The director argued that effective collaboration depends on strong Veterinary Services, public health systems, environmental and wildlife institutions, food systems and research capacities.
«One Health will not become a reality through declarations alone. It will become a reality in countries, laboratories, hospitals, Veterinary Services, farms and food systems, in wildlife and ecosystem management and, above all, in communities,» Soubeyran said.
The One Health Joint Plan of Action, presented in 2022 by FAO, UNEP, WHO and WOAH, provides a common framework for collaboration on human, animal, plant and ecosystem health. For WOAH, that framework only becomes meaningful when it transforms the way institutions work together at national and local level.
The session “Bridging Policy-to-Practice: Implementing the One Health Joint Plan of Action at National Level” addressed how a country can move from endorsing the approach to defining responsibilities, sharing information and sustaining a national plan beyond changes of leadership or the end of external funding. The experiences of Uzbekistan, Singapore and Malawi made it possible to walk through different stages, from capacity and gap assessments and stakeholder engagement to the establishment of coordination mechanisms and the conversion of priorities into budgeted national action plans.
Data from the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) highlighted the conditions for lasting implementation: political leadership, clear mandates, integrated data, sustainable financing and workforce capacity. «The real test of the One Health approach is not whether countries have created a strategy, but whether that strategy transforms decisions, budgets and action on the ground,» said Dr. Chadia Wannous, head of WOAH's One Health and Global Frameworks Department. «Implementation must be country-led, adequately funded and embedded in institutions. Otherwise, collaboration risks continuing to depend on individual projects or on the urgency of the next crisis.»
Prevention was another focus of WOAH's contribution. In a session co-organized with PREZODE, participants examined how scientific evidence, policy priorities, local knowledge and lived experience can enrich one another and lead to earlier and better-informed decisions. Experiences from Senegal, Vietnam and the field of global governance helped examine recurring obstacles such as short-term financing, lack of trust, limited community participation and an «emergency bias» that causes cooperation to fade once the immediate danger has passed.
The FAO/WHO/WOAH Joint Working Group on One Health training is working on competency-based learning pathways tailored to the needs of countries and the workforce. Its session showed how to connect existing learning platforms and technical resources, reducing duplication and combining profession-specific knowledge with competencies such as systems thinking, collaboration, communication and leadership.
Effective systems must recognize that risks do not affect all people equally. A session on transformative gender approaches examined how to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion into governance, financing, data and programmes. Joint work by WOAH and ILRI on wild meat value chains offered a concrete example: although hunting is often the most visible activity, analysis of the entire chain reveals other roles, such as women's participation in transport and sales, and forms of exposure that might otherwise remain invisible.
WOAH experts also contributed to discussions on wildlife health and surveillance, sustainable financing and the current H5N1 panzootic. These themes lead to the same conclusion: complex threats cannot be addressed through a single intervention or from a single sector.
Prevention depends on connecting Veterinary Services, public health authorities, wildlife and environment institutions, the scientific community, industry and communities around shared risks. Ultimately, the approach will not be judged by the number of strategies drafted or meetings held, but by whether countries and communities are better prepared to prevent threats, protect animals and people, preserve ecosystems and act together when risks arise.
