One Health in the Argan Forest

Rabies is a zoonotic diseases that is entirely preventable through vaccination and we have already conducted rabies vaccination campaigns in the project area. However, cases of rabies can still occur when dogs remain unvaccinated, which happen with feral dogs roam free in the argan forest. The issue of feral dogs is a complex one: they don't belong to anybody specific but still people occasionnaly feed them in villages. In addition, they also find abundant food in large garbage dumps, some of which are spread around the argan forest.

On the occasion of World Rabies Day on September, 28th,  the feral dogs challenge was discussed at a round table organized by One Health Morocco with many stakeholders from various insitutions being present. After lengthy discussions looking at root causes of the problems in an inter-disciplinary manner - the very essence of One Health - it was agreed that a loophole in legislation on dogs' ownership was contributing to the problem of feral dogs. As a result, this issue is going to be examined in more depth in order to fill in legislation gaps and decrease the rabies threat represented by unvaccinated dogs. 

From field actions to policy making, this is One Health in Action in the argan forest and we need your support more than ever.

On the occasion of World Biodiversity Day in May, we organized the opening ceremony of the first One Health Garden of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants in Morocco.

This was made possible by much hard work form the whole field team during more than six months. A workshop was initially conducted with women from the argan oil cooperative to chose which species to grow, then a lot of work went into locating the plot where to grow the garden, fencing it against wild boar incursions, and setting up a reliable irrigation system.

The opening ceremony consisted in a morning of presentations about One Health and Biodiversity and the work of our One Health Association at the Medical Faculty Ibn Zohr in Agadir. The whole team of around twenty delegates then went to the garden in the douar of Aglagal where the garden is located near the women cooperative producing argan oil. 

This garden will not only allow for the cultivation of important aromatic and medicinal plants in the argan forest, but it will also allow for the transmission of invaluable traditional environmental knowledge to future generations. This is One Health in action for conserving a unique bio-cultural heritage which is critically important to Morocco and to the world's biodiversity. 

Links:

• Article referring to our work for World Biodiversity Day