Animal disease, zoonosis and ‘one health’: What we veterinarians have learned throughout history

The COVID19 pandemic has revealed professional transversality in the field of health, when doctors, veterinarians, epidemiologists, immunologists, jurists, sociologists, environmentalists, politicians, etc. have had to collaborate to find and apply solutions to the problem. Throughout history, veterinarians have learned how animal health and disease directly or indirectly affected the human population. Zoonoses-infectious diseases transmissible from animals to humans-are a good example of this. Using history, we will go through some of these processes to see how veterinarians have acted, involving and collaborating with other professionals, to arrive at the current concept of a single health (‘One health’). The need for multidisciplinary cooperation in order to effectively face pandemics such as the one we are currently experiencing becomes fundamental. © 2020, International Center for Animal Law and Policy. All rights reserved.