Zika in Singapore: insights from One Health and social medicine

The detection of the Zika virus in Singapore in the last week of August 2016 has generated concern in the community, particularly among pregnant women, and prompted the authorities to take swift action to contain the spread of the virus. In addition to public health efforts currently under way, including the lively ethical discourse on dealing with this mild disease and its significant risk of congenital malformations, we believe that important insights can also be found in the One Health (OH) approach. OH is an ethical, ecological approach that takes into consideration justice and respect for human and animal populations as well as the environment.(1-3) This approach considers the wider social and environmental factors that shape disease transmission, and helps us to identify three populations that are particularly vulnerable but may be overlooked in this scenario: transient foreign workers, their sexual partners and local monkey populations.