In an era marked by accelerating climate change, emerging zoonotic diseases, supply chain disruptions, and persistent global inequities in access to health technologies, the One Health approach has moved from theory to necessity. The COVID-19 pandemic, repeated outbreaks of Ebola, mpox, avian influenza, and antimicrobial resistance have underscored a fundamental truth: human health cannot be protected in isolation from animal health and the environment.

Nowhere is this interdependence more evident than in the systems required to safely store, transport, and deploy vaccines, diagnostics, and biological materials.

Globally, cold-chain infrastructure remains one of the most overlooked yet mission-critical components of health security. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly half of vaccines are wasted worldwide each year, largely due to temperature control failures. In low- and middle-income countries, particularly across Africa, unreliable electricity, fragmented logistics systems, and limited technical capacity exacerbate these losses.

As climate volatility intensifies heat stress and extreme weather events, sustainable and resilient cooling solutions are no longer optional, they are foundational to public health preparedness and pandemic prevention.

Against this backdrop, 2025 marked a pivotal year for advancing One Health through sustainable cold-chain systems, particularly within Africa’s rapidly evolving health and research ecosystem.

One Health is an integrated approach to optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. As such, it requires collaboration across multiple sectors and disciplines to address complex, interdependent challenges, including the adequate provision of health related sustainable cold-chains.

In 2025, the Clean Cooling Network’s One Health activities focused on the roll-out of training, consolidating our position in the global health community as a key player, and deepening collaboration amongst human health, veterinary, and policymaking practitioners.

This integrated vision aligns closely with global policy frameworks, including the Quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action led by WHO, FAO, WOAH, and UNEP. For Africa, where over 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin, operationalising One Health is not a future aspiration but an immediate priority.

Effective cold-chain systems sit at the intersection of this agenda, supporting immunisation campaigns, veterinary disease control, laboratory surveillance, and food safety, all while minimising environmental impact.

Our "Cold-Chain for Global Health (CCGH)” course equips trainees with practical, systems-level skills to manage cold-chain challenges across human and animal health settings. In 2025, we launched the course and through engaging three 2025 cohorts we graduated 49 professionals from public health, veterinary services, laboratory systems, immunisation programmes, and other research institutions.

Notably, the course averaged 300 applicants per offering, underscoring rapidly growing demand for applied One Health cold-chain training across Rwanda and Africa more broadly.

This demand reflects a broader continental shift towards capacity-building that prioritises implementation, not just policy. African health systems are increasingly recognising that investments in vaccines, diagnostics, and surveillance yield limited returns without parallel investments in cold-chain expertise. By targeting professionals already embedded within national systems, the CCGH course bridges the persistent gap between technical knowledge and operational reality.

Importantly, the course’s systems-level approach reflects a growing understanding that cold-chains are not merely technical installations but living infrastructures shaped by governance, financing, workforce capacity, and environmental constraints.

In a region where energy efficiency and climate resilience are inseparable from health outcomes, training that integrates sustainability into cold-chain design is especially critical.

Beyond training, this year also saw us further establish our position in the scientific community, as well as with policymakers and industrial leaders, as a convener of regional and international stakeholders. We successfully organised and delivered the second annual One Health Vaccine Symposium, bringing together more than 200 participants from Rwanda, Africa and the UK.

The 2-day event (plus one day field trip), was held on our Kigali campus of the Africa Centre for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES), and focused on translations from research to implementation, It provided a platform for dialogue on vaccine development and deployment, cold-chain resilience, and pandemic preparedness across the human and animal health sectors. It also strengthened cross-country collaborations and reinforced the importance of integrated approaches to vaccine delivery and biosecurity.

In a global context where vaccine nationalism and fragmented supply chains continue to undermine equity, such convenings play a vital role in fostering trust, shared learning, and south–south and north–south collaboration. Hosting the symposium in Kigali was particularly symbolic, positioning Africa not as a passive recipient of innovation, but as a co-creator of solutions tailored to its realities.

The emphasis on translation, from research to implementation, responds directly to a long-standing critique of global health initiatives: that innovation too often stalls at the pilot phase. By grounding discussions in real-world constraints and showcasing operational models, the symposium contributed to shifting the conversation from ambition to action.

Looking ahead to 2026

In the coming year, we aim to build on this momentum by expanding One Health–oriented training, increasing regional reach, and deepening practical engagement with national programmes. Priorities include scaling the CCGH course, increasing the value of our alumni networks, and more directly linking training outcomes to implementation in immunisation, surveillance, and outbreak preparedness. Simultaneously, we will be strengthening food systems, health systems, and diagnostics infrastructure.

We also plan to further position cold-chain systems as a core component of One Health resilience, supporting vaccines, diagnostics, and biological samples across human, animal, and environmental health domains, as well as a critical infrastructure essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Looking forward, the stakes could not be higher. As Africa prepares for increased local vaccine manufacturing, expanded genomic surveillance, and growing cross-border trade in biological products, the need for sustainable, interoperable cold-chain systems will only intensify. Cold-chains must be recognised not as ancillary logistics, but as strategic infrastructure underpinning health security, economic resilience, and climate adaptation.

By anchoring cold-chain innovation within the One Health framework and investing in people as much as in technology, the groundwork is being laid for systems that are not only functional but also future-ready. In doing so, Africa can help shape a global model of health resilience, one that is collaborative, sustainable, and grounded in shared responsibility for the health of people, animals, and the planet.

Jean Pierre Musabyimana is the One Health Research Lead at the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES).