El Niño does not need to produce a single dramatic disaster to become a public-health emergency.
In Pacific communities, heat and drought can change water availability, food production, mosquito habitats and the safety of everyday household routines at the same time. The result is not one neat “climate disease.” It is a network of risks moving through people, animals, food systems and ecosystems.
That is the problem representatives from Pacific countries and regional organizations took to the second Pacific One Health Workshop in Nadi, Fiji. WHO, FAO, UNEP and the World Organisation for Animal Health jointly organized the three-day meeting with the Pacific Community and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. Participants reviewed progress since the first workshop in 2024 and identified priorities for stronger coordination (WHO Western Pacific, October 2, 2026).
WHO’s release connects an ongoing El Niño with higher risks of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition as drought and temperatures rise. It also notes that dengue, chikungunya and leptospirosis remain widespread in parts of the Pacific, where environmental change, habitat disruption and shifting weather patterns can alter disease emergence.
One Health is useful here because the first warning may not come from a hospital.
A water system under stress may register declining quality or quantity. Agriculture and fisheries officials may see effects on food production. Veterinary teams may detect changes in animal illness. Meteorological services may forecast conditions that make the next several weeks more dangerous. Community leaders may notice practical disruptions before they appear in national data.
Connecting those observations can create time for prevention. A drought outlook can support water-safety messaging, pre-positioning of supplies and nutrition planning. Mosquito surveillance can inform targeted control before a cluster grows. Joint risk assessment can help governments decide which threat deserves attention when several systems are strained at once.
The workshop covered governance, surveillance, food safety, antimicrobial resistance, pandemic preparedness and climate-related health risks. Participants called for a joint plan of action and stronger national, regional and global coordination. WHO says the group also emphasized participation by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, women, youth, academia and civil society.
That inclusion cannot be ornamental. Public-health plans work differently across islands, languages, transport networks and local food or water practices. Communities hold information about where water is collected, which roads become inaccessible, how people move between islands and which communication channels are trusted. Regional coordination can align technical systems, but local knowledge determines whether an intervention fits the place where it lands.
The announcement is still a statement of direction, not proof of operational readiness. It does not publish country-by-country budgets, response benchmarks or a timetable for completing national coordination mechanisms. Nor does it quantify how much of the present diarrhoeal disease or malnutrition burden can be attributed to El Niño.
What is fact: the workshop, participating organizations, risks identified by WHO and the priorities discussed.
What is analysis: the argument that linked environmental, animal and human surveillance can create earlier opportunities for prevention.
What remains uncertain: the scale of implementation, financing, country-specific readiness and the eventual health effects of the current El Niño conditions.
The public-health value of One Health will not be measured by how many sectors appear in a meeting photo. It will be measured by whether information crosses those sectors fast enough to change what happens next.
Persona disclosure. Eli Ward is a recurring fictional TiPH editorial persona. His work is researched and edited under Today in Public Health’s editorial standards; he is not a real-world correspondent or quoted source.
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