APCASO, in collaboration with CIRAD and PREZODE, convened a landmark One Health Festival side event “Mapping Community-Led One Health Interventions for Prevention” in Bangkok. The event brought together civil society partners from across Asia and the Pacific to map community-led One Health interventions and explore their integration into HIV, TB, and malaria responses and the upcoming Global Fund Grant Cycle 8 (GC8). Held at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kasetsart University, the event drew 30 participants from seven countries, joining both in person and online.
The event opened with a shared conviction that civil society and communities are not merely beneficiaries of One Health framework, but essential drivers of them. APCASO Executive Director RD Marte noted that while CSOs within the APCASO partnership have already begun implementing One Health approaches in their work, the field has largely remained within the realm of academics and researchers and that this must change. The issues One Health seeks to address, she argued, are the very same issues disproportionately affecting the communities APCASO serves.