RESUMEN
Background: One Health focuses on sustainable health for humans, animals, and ecosystems. The approach has been well demonstrated, yet most efforts have not been scaled up. Understanding the organisations involved in scaling up processes is critical to translating research into practice. The Lao People's Democratic Republic has successfully implemented One Health projects for multiple decades; however, the organisational network has not been described and scaling up efforts have been limited. Methods: Data from organisations involved in One Health projects over the past five years were collected by key-informant interview or workshop. The network was investigated using a mixture of quantitative network analysis and qualitative thematic analysis. Results: The organisational network was quantitatively described as sparse and centralised. Organisations were required to harness pre-existing relationships to maximise scarce resources and make co-ordination and alignment of priorities more efficient. A lack of international organisations in the top 10% of resource sharing metrics suggests a potential disconnect between donors. This was reflected in the challenges faced by national organisations and a feeling of being stretched thin over numerous externally funded projects with donor-driven priorities. Conclusions: It appears that high-level political support for country ownership of development and aid priorities remains unrealised. Developing network capacity and capability may assist scaling up efforts and build resilience in the network and its core organisations. This may allow for the inclusion of more development, education, environment, and water, sanitation, and hygiene organisations that were perceived to be lacking. Future One Health programmes should focus on practical activities that do not overload staff capacity. There is much for One Health to learn about the art of scaling up and organisations are encouraged to include implementation science in their research to inform future scaling up efforts.
RESUMEN
Women-headed households (WHHs) have limited access to agricultural inputs and extension services relative to male-headed households (MHHs) which may lead to yield gaps, poorer livelihoods and greater food insecurity. Since lower fertilizer use by WHHs will restrict crop yield, we examined how limited access to fertilizer inputs and extension services was reflected in nutrient use gaps relative to Government recommendations. A total of 80 WHHs were randomly selected for interview from four Agro-ecological Zones (AEZs) covering five representative districts of Bangladesh to assess, for the first time, nutrient use gaps of WHHs under five rice-based cropping patterns. Data collected from 576 MHHs (reported elsewhere) was also utilized to examine nutrient use gaps, crop yields and farm income between MHHs and WHHs. The nutrient use rates were compared with the government Fertilizer Recommendation Guides (FRG): FRG-2012 and FRG-2018. The WHHs underuse N, P, K, S and Zn under fully rice-based cropping patterns, while MHHs overuse those nutrients, but WHH tend to overuse N, P, and K for patterns with potato and watermelon crops. WHHs seem to prioritize high-value crops for fertilizer use, but even yield was 14%, 11%, 17% and 15% lower for irrigated rice, maize, potato and watermelon, respectively compared to smallholder MHHs under diverse rice-based cropping patterns. Overall, WHHs had 10% and 14% lower farm incomes than MHHs under fully rice-based and high-value cropping patterns, respectively. Financial losses for both WHHs and the government due to overuse of NPK on high-value potato crops were estimated at around 63 and 115 USD ha-1, respectively. However, the socio-demographic information suggested that effective extension services targeted to WHH, easing of social restrictions on their mobility, access of WHHs to fertilizers at Govt. fixed price and improved financial capability through better credit access could bring WHHs towards balanced fertilizer use practices in the EGP.