Message from the Executive Director

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented. No one could have imagined that our interconnected world would be brought to a standstill in 2020, with several countries going into lockdown, international and domestic flights grounded, and global supply chains disrupted The pandemic revealed the interdependencies among humans, animals, and their shared environment, and rapidly raised awareness of the One Health concept and approach.

To effectively withstand pandemics, we must invest in strengthening animal and human health systems, including building the next generation of One Health professionals with cross-sectoral competencies to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease threats As producers of a sustainable One Health workforce, universities must equip their students with technical competencies and core competencies (soft skills) to work collaboratively and systematically across disciplines and sectors to combat complex health challenges like the COVID19

Throughout 2020, the Secretariat had privileges to represent our country networks and their universities to advocate for more collaboration among ministries, universities, NGOs, and the private sector in developing One Health workforce, generating evidence-based information for policymakers, and maintaining public health surge capacity at events such as ASEAN+3 FETN Steering Committee Meeting and Lancet Commission webinar.

Despite restricted movements and other challenges, SEAOHUN and our country networks made progress by conducting several activities virtually and assisted their countries in addressing the pandemic with the support of USAID Tranche-4 emergency funding. The Secretariat was able to conduct our regular scholarship and fellowship programs and launched two new regional programs – small grants for faculty members and regional student engagement. Furthermore, the Secretariat made significant progress toward the SEAOHUN organizational sustainability by diversifying our funding portfolio with the USAID STOP Spillover project as one of the consortium partners and the Chevron One Health Education in Southeast Asia project.

Our achievements would not have been possible without the support of USAID, the OHW-NG consortium, and all other partners Let us continue our collaboration to develop a resilient and competent One Health workforce to prevent our world from future infectious disease threats.