Author: Begoña Pérez Cabezas

With the aim of promoting and disseminating the One Health concept throughout the community and civil society, the 'Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar' of the University of Porto (ICBAS), together with the 'Instituto Português de Fotografia' (IPF), organized the Photography Contest ‘Perspective(s) on One Health’.

In the context of this contest, Teresa Nunes, photographer at IPF, wrote the following text, in order to frame and defend photography as a cultural tool:

‘Artivism’ – photography as a cultural tool

Art has always worked as a reflection of society, following reality over time, recording it, but also acting as an instrument of change. It is called “artivism”, a portmanteau [1] coming from the junction of the words “art” and “activism”. There is an extensive range of artists, in the most diverse artistic disciplines, who assume themselves as artivists, advocating for the most different causes.

Naturally, Photography is no exception, appearing as fertile ground for artivists. In a first analysis, it can be assumed that photographers related to artivism will be linked to documentary photography and photojournalism, but this is a reductive view. Although, effectively, this area of photography, which strives for the representation of the real without manipulations or alterations, is quite prone to artivism, other photographers, who depart from the canons of photojournalism, also fit into the concept. Whatever the area of photography, currently photographers are mobilized by the ability of photography to show the public and political agents issues in which the intervention and awareness of society is necessary.

Anthony Luvera, who was recently in Porto to speak at the lecture “Photography and Social Activism”, within the scope of the 'Encontros do Olhar' conversation cycle “Fragility – Transitoriedade”, organized by the Portuguese Institute of Photography, works with individuals and groups of marginalized people by inviting them to talk about their experiences, creating with them collaborative projects in areas such as mental health, addictions, homelessness and the LGBTQ+ community.

Eduardo Leal, with his series “Plastic Trees”, portrays pollution in the Bolivian Altiplano, demonstrating his concern for environmental issues. The author opted for an aestheticization of pollution as an alternative to traditional means of reporting, photographing plastic bags, one of the most used consumer items and which ends up becoming one of the biggest sources of pollution worldwide. With this work, he intended to draw attention to the problem of pollution, focusing on an area where thousands of bags wander with the wind until they end up stuck in the bushes, damaging the landscape.

Von Wong, known worldwide for his hyper-realistic works, staged and assembled with the help of his team and a multitude of volunteers who join the artist in each project. This one starts by setting up grandiose scenarios for his photographs that are always designed to raise awareness of issues such as pollution and excessive use of plastic, recycling and animal welfare, among others.

We can see that many authors fight for different causes with which they identify and that, to the most inattentive eyes, may seem disconnected and with no apparent reason to be the target of attention of the same people, however, it is increasingly commonly accepted that we all live on a planet in which everything is interconnected and issues of human, animal and environmental health are interconnected, explaining relationships that could, at first glance, seem almost unreasonable, is, after all, the One Health.

It is therefore to be concluded that photography can and should be understood as a cultural tool capable of communicating a message of awareness and inducing changes. In an era where civic participation is increasingly necessary to encourage changes in the society we live in, it is increasingly common to see photographers joining these causes in order to make use of their greatest tool to support them. 

[1] Palavra fantasista formada por elementos de outras duas (Dicionário infopédia de Inglês – Português [em linha]. Porto: Porto Editora. Disponível em https://www.infopedia.pt/dicionarios/ingles-portugues/portmanteau)

During the celebrations of 47th anniversary of ICBAS, held on May 5, 2022, the institution took the opportunity to announce the winners of the contest

Honorable mention:

Third prize:

Second prize:

First prize:

Metropolitan Area is drawing up a plan to respond to the phenomenon. Only in the cities along the Douro there are more than a thousand birds and they are breeding.

Never so many seagulls have inhabited the city of Porto. There will be between 1186 and 1626 seagulls flying over the Porto Metropolitan Area (AMP), according to the National Census of the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (SPEA). It is the largest number of seagulls in an urban environment in the country. And with bird breeding on the rise, the trend is to continue to rise. Matosinhos and Gaia also suffer from the problem, which translates into public health risks. A metropolitan plan to control the seagull population is being prepared, the report of which will be published shortly.

One of the measures that may be on the table is an eventual operation to remove eggs from the nests. However, as seagulls have an average life cycle of 20 years, the result of this work will take time to reveal itself. “In the late 1990s, seagulls began to expand to the north and exclusively to urban areas. When they successfully reproduce in a place, they always come back”, notes Nuno Oliveira, marine conservation technician at SPEA. The removal of eggs will always be “a lengthy process, which requires human and financial resources”, he adds, warning that during the first three or four years of life, seagulls do not reproduce.

Contamination Source
Easy access to food is the main reason for the movement of seagulls from the Center and South to the North of the country and their incessant reproduction is a risk to public health. That's the same alert that makes Adriano Bordalo e Sá, hydrobiologist and researcher od the Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS): “They have the same pathogenic bacteria in their excrement as we do and are a clear source of water and soil contamination and disease transmission”.

“The explosion of food availability”, almost “without limitation”, leads to an increase in the population of seagulls, points out Nuno Oliveira, who notes “a great effort to improve waste management and temporary storage”. Fishing waste also feeds these animals, particularly thanks to the amount of already dead fish that are returned to the sea.

“It's free food for the seagulls. And there are eight thousand fishing vessels in the country”, notes Nuno Oliveira. The first step, says Bordalo e Sá, is the launch of “a campaign not to feed the seagulls, in the same way that there was one not to feed the pigeons”. Nuno Oliveira agrees.

To decide on strategies to combat the problem, AMP launched, two years ago, a public tender, with a base price of 135 thousand euros, for the elaboration of a population control plan. That work will be over.

The last study, published in 2011, pointed to the decrease in available food as one of the solutions.

Source: Jornal de Notícias
Text: Adriana Castro

On March 4th, World Obesity Day, was launched the book “Take care of yourself – Guidelines for a Healthy Life”, within the scope of the project with the same name, developed by the Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS), together with the Centro Materno Infantil do Norte (CMIN).

Winner of the “Comunicar Saúde” Award from Ciência Viva – National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, for its contribution to the health literacy of the population, the project “Take care of yourself – Guidelines for a Healthy Life” aims to alert to the dangers of pediatric obesity and diabetes, emphasizing the importance of early diagnosis, as well as the implementation of measures to prevent the development of chronic disease in adulthood.

“Child obesity and diabetes, which is directly associated, is one of the main health problems for children and adolescents. It is a problem that in Portugal has a very worrying dimension, with overweight and obesity rates very close to 30%, which places Portugal as one of the countries with the highest incidence of the disease”, warns Alberto Caldas Afonso, professor at ICBAS, Director of CMIN and responsible for the project.

The book aims to clarify concepts and doubts, so that everyone can understand how to adopt a healthier lifestyle. The contents were developed by a multidisciplinary team, with the aim of being understood and disseminated by the greatest number of people.

“Take care of you- Guidelines for a Healthy Life” is aimed at all children, adolescents, families and schools. Through simple, appealing and didactic content, it alerts to the importance of an early diagnosis and the establishment of measures that can prevent conditioning of chronic illness in adult life.

“This book focuses on easily understandable, very practical content that will allow its use in everyday life. For the younger ones, an interactive game was also designed that challenges them to answer the questions presented in the book”, explains the coordinator of the work.

Taking into account the impact of social networks on teenagers, videos were also developed with two 'influencers' - the actress Madalena Aragão and the player of Futebol Clube do Porto, Francisco Conceição -, which show how diet and physical exercise allow them to maintain an optimal daily performance.

In order to reach school communities across the country, ICBAS partnered with Missão Continente, which included the book in the contents of itsu educational program (Escola Missão Continente). In this way, it is intended to reinforce the message of the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle to Pre-School, 1st and 2nd Cycles of Basic Education.

January was the 'One Health' awareness month and so, we considered this an excellent opportunity to invite Professors Carlos Vasconcelos, Luísa Valente and Adriano Bordalo e Sá, members of the ICBAS 'One Health' steering group. writing their vision on the various perspectives of the concept, applied to the reality of human and animal medicine and the health of the environment.

‘One Health from a medical perspective – Human health’

Yes, we all know, when we stop to think about it, that we are not alone on the planet. But on a day-to-day basis we act as if we were. Unless… “things” impose themselves, as is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic. A microbe, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leaves its realm and, faster than Genghis Khan, puts old and highly civilized Europe, the entire western world, indeed, everyone, paralyzed in the economy (then and the bankers so important?!), in education (virtual reality helped us…) and in tourism (so many planes stopped, so many people without work…). In short, it messed with our whole lives, the big and the small things, the small and the powerful.

How was it possible? The answer is just one, clear and obvious (how can we be so stupid?!): in our EARTH everything is interconnected, the biggest animal with the smallest microbe, the trees, the wind and the sun, me, you, the black from Africa, yellow from China, red from America, the smartest and the most uncultured, the beautiful princess and the monster, the rich and the poor, we are all connected.

Whatever each one does, the interconnected network will know, feel, adapt, e pur si muove…

We treat the world as if we were absolute owners. And, at least for now, we know we shouldn't.

This time for change is urgent. All of us, each one of us, will not be able to doubt his responsibility in this struggle for the continuation of life on Earth.

In human health, there are many attitudes that must suffer the wind of change, starting with seeing around us – not just looking! –  and recognize others, living beings and the environment. And changing practices, such as the inappropriate use of antibiotics in the community and also in the hospital, generating more resistant microbial strains and stimulating, in a vicious cycle, investment in research and financial resources, which could be directed towards more useful goals for human health .

The One Health concept raises the need for articulation between all those who can contribute to improve and, even more, prevent global health. Among health professionals, especially doctors, in the community and in hospitals, they cannot limit themselves to treating “the disease”. They have to see the patient as a whole, in which environment he lives, what he eats, what exercise he does, how he integrates into the family and society. It is necessary to understand the causes that led to the disease: was it related to food, to the water he drinks or drank, to the animals he comes into contact with, to the environment in which he develops his work, or to that trip to the ends of the world he dreamed of so much?

As a doctor for 45 years, I am in a privileged position to say: we cannot continue like this my dear colleagues! We have to be more global, more integrative and always try to understand what may be behind the disease that we diagnose and treat so well. That's not enough. For the sake of One Health, we must think and act more deeply and, above all, be interconnected with all the other actors in the HEALTH dimension. Only then will we have tomorrow for our descendants.

Carlos Vasconcelos, Specialist in Internal Medicine e Professor Catedrático convidado do ICBAS

Promoting animal and human health

Animal health has acquired an unparalleled importance. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the interconnection between human health, animal health, the environment and food safety was well evidenced.

More forgotten, however, is another daily struggle, albeit much more silent: antibiotic resistance. This is a challenge of the utmost importance to achieve the goals listed in the European Action Plan for “One Health” and in the from Farm to Fork Strategy, which led, from the beginning of this year, to the application of new rules to promote the animal health and combating antimicrobial resistance.

Limiting the use of antibiotics to situations of extreme need is a priority, and the European Union has set a target of halving it by 2030. This commitment has already started in animal production, including aquaculture, where the selection of more robust strains, as well as the adoption of better cultivation practices, including vaccination, better hygiene and adaptation of environmental conditions to the production of each species, are already a current practice. Effective strategies for disease prevention have also been developed, through the new concept of precision nutrition, where diets are rigorously and personalized to meet the nutritional requirements of each animal.

Currently, cutting-edge technologies are used (sensors, information technologies, artificial intelligence) capable of monitoring in real time the physiological state of the animal, allowing the integration of a large volume of data and converting them into fast and assertive decision-making that anticipate scenarios. The result of these good practices translates into increased production efficiency and animal welfare, minimizing the impact on the environment. On the other hand, the total control of the value chain of the agri-food sector makes it possible to guarantee the traceability of products and the food safety of the consumer.

Animal production has increasingly focused on the use of sustainable and functional diets with two objectives. On the one hand, the inclusion of supplements that offer benefits to the animal's health, which allows it to increase its resistance to challenging environmental conditions (more extreme temperatures, less water availability and more acidic waters). On the other hand, they can be deposited in muscle and/or milk, and increase the nutritional value of these products.

Consumers' concerns about the nutritional value of food are increasing. The search for products with specific claims such as “source of selenium” or “rich in omega-3” is a global trend, to which animal production has, through new formulas, aimed at different age groups (children and elderly), or health conditions.

Therefore, foods rich in omega-3, iodine and selenium, iron and other minerals can be found today, which, unlike the inorganic solutions available in pharmacies, are easily assimilated, and therefore better used by our body and healthier. Food supplements in animal production will thus be a growing trend, which will help to mitigate the challenges associated with climate change and contribute to the production of healthy and safe food.

Finally, I would like to mention the impact of our food choices on the environment. Portugal is a country with a deficit in the production of most of the agricultural products it consumes, including meat, fruits, cereals (except rice), pulses and oilseeds. In other words, we have to import these products. Transport remains a significant source of air pollution, harming the environment and human health. Choosing local and sustainable products should be an individual responsibility and a contribution to a healthier planet.

Luísa M.P. Valente, Associate Professor at ICBAS

The Environment in the One Health concept

The Biosphere is the thin layer of our Planet where life has existed for 4 billion years. Since then, living beings have experienced periods of strong development, interspersed with others of overwhelming extinctions. The Homo sapiens sapiens cames to shuffle natural processes, the result of the enormous pressure exerted on the environment, now on a global scale. From a balanced survival in the past, we moved to a direct intervention, where different interests prevail, including economic ones, as the anthropocentric vision of the Planet was consolidated.

The idea of sustainable development emerged in 1987, by the hand of the United Nations, in view of the escalation of human action on the environment. Today, more than a piece of rhetoric, it is imperative to satisfy the present needs of a changing world, without jeopardizing the legacy and needs of future generations.

Nowadays, we have the perception that everything is interconnected. If, on the one hand, our activity affects the Environment, it continues to affect Man, since the degradation of the Biosphere has, inexorably, dramatic effects on human, animal and plant health.

This vision is clearly expressed in the One Health concept, in which the health of the Environment is one of the key components and, increasingly, placed on the agenda.

Adriano A. Bordalo e Sá, Director of the Department of Population Studies at ICBAS

From everything we know so far, and which goes far beyond conspiracy theories, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, originated in an animal. World Health Organization experts dispatched to Wuhan, China, concluded that the most likely scenario is a zoological origin, via an intermediate host, be it a bat or another animal that has not yet been identified. Which showed how essential it is to monitor viruses in animals in order to avoid contagion to humans. It is the so-called integrated approach to health that links the environment, animals and man and that the 'Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar', in Porto, is already doing.

See the full report at RTP website.

Source: RTP Notícias

The contribution of universities to the awareness of antimicrobial resistance

From the 18th to the 24th of November, various initiatives were held at the Portuguese General Directorate of Food and Veterinary (DGAV) to mark the World Week for Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness.

Considering the topic chosen this year "Spread Awareness, Stop Resistance", DGAV collected some testimonies on video, from different personalities and professionals representing different perspectives on the impact of Antimicrobial Resistance on Public Health, Animal Health and the environment.

Professor João Niza Ribeiro, from the Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS), of the University of Porto, highlights, in this video, the contribution of Universities to the awareness of resistance to antimicrobials and to the application of good practices for the responsible use of antimicrobials, through the training of professionals in the area of animal production, as well as through collaboration with the authorities to develop and improve systems that allow the agricultural sectors to respond to the great challenge of reducing the use of these drugs.

Source: DGAV – Direção Geral de Alimentação e Veterinária