The One Health (OH) High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) of the Quadripartite Organizations has defined OH as an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. This approach recognizes that the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment including ecosystems are closely linked and interdependent. The Tripartite, which originally included the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), later became Quadripartite organizations when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) joined the OH alliance in 2022. There are Global and Regional Quadripartite Secretariats consisting of officials of headquarters and regional offices, respectively.
Over the years, the Tripartite/Quadripartite organizations and other partner agencies have developed several OH assessment and operational tools to support Member States in assessing their core capacities to achieve compliance with the requirements of international standards such as the International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR), WOAH’s Terrestrial and Aquatic Animal Health Codes, World Trade Organization’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (WTO-SPS), FAO/WHO Codex standards, etc. The technical areas that the existing tools currently support include progress monitoring, coordination and collaboration mechanisms, and capacity building for prevention, detection, preparedness, and response to health threats emerging at the human-animal-environment interface. Additionally, more OH operational tools are in development and will be made available in the future.