Community-designed One Health units as a model for integrated service delivery in pastoralist areas of Africa

Pastoralists often live in remote and hard-to-reach areas that are poorly served by existing health services and surveillance systems. To address this challenge, the One Health for Humans, Environment, Animals and Livelihoods (HEAL) project has developed an integrated service delivery model called ‘One Health Units’ (OHUs), which promotes collaboration and cooperation between service providers working in the areas of human health, animal health, environmental health, and natural resources management. Working as a multi-sectoral team, OHU staff deliver a range of sector-specific preventive and curative services as well as cross-cutting targeting vulnerable pastoralists, their livestock, and the rangeland ecosystems they depend on. The design, planning, management, and monitoring of OHU activities are led by communities through ‘Multistakeholder Innovation Platforms’ (MSIPs) and by local government through ‘One Health Taskforces (OHTFs)’. The HEAL consortium partners, including Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse (VSF-Suisse, lead agency), Amref Health Africa (Amref), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) provide technical and logistical support to the OHUs, MSIPs and OHTFs. The project is co-funded for a period of 12 years by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and aims to generate strong evidence on OHUs as an effective and sustainable solution for service delivery in pastoralist areas.