Medicinal products in Europe are under the strict control of many organisations headed by the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and HealthCare (EDQM) in Strasbourg and its related General European Official Medicines Control Laboratories (OMCLs) Network (GEON). The EDQM works in cooperation with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). All of these institutions have one main goal – to protect public health in Europe and around the world. One of the more important effects of the harmonisation of pharmaceutical law in Europe was the introduction of the mutual recognition principle for the Official Control Authority Batch Release (OCABR)/Official Batch Protocol Review (OBPR) certificates in the European Union. The National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) in Poland is an example of an OMCL laboratory within the Veterinary Batch Release Network (VBRN) that issues the European certificates. The NVRI is actively involved in the batch release of immunological veterinary medicinal products (IVMPs), with approximately 1,800 certificates for IVMPs issued per year. It is also one of only four veterinary OMCLs that perform Post Marketing Surveillance (PMS) studies including approximately 47 IVMPs per year. All the results of the testing data are sent to the Chief Veterinary Officer, and also to the electronic Network platforms of the EDQM, which enables transparent information exchange.

‘One health’ is particularly suited to serve mobile pastoralists. Dinka pastoralists in Sudan inspired Calvin Schwabe to coin the term ‘one medicine’, indicating that there is no difference in paradigm between human and veterinary medicine. Our contemporary definition of ‘one health’ is any added value in terms of improved health of humans and animals or financial savings or environmental services resulting from a closer cooperation of human and animal health sectors. Here we present a summary of ‘one health’ studies with mobile pastoralists in Africa which were done in research partnership, demonstrating such an added value. Initial joint human and animal health studies revealed higher livestock vaccination coverage than in the pastoralist community, leading to joint animal and human vaccination intervention studies which demonstrated a better access to primary health care services for pastoralists in Chad. Further simultaneous animal and human serological studies showed that camel breeding was associated with human Q-fever seropositivity. In Borana communities in Ethiopia, human cases of  Mycobacterium bovis infection could be related to strains isolated from cattle. A challenge remained with regard to how to assess vaccination coverage in mobile populations. With the advent of mobile phones, health and demographic surveillance could be established for mobile pastoralists and their animals. This presents vast possibilities for surveillance and control of human and animal diseases. Pastoralists prefer a ‘one health’ approach and therefore contribute toward the validation of this concept by showing real added value of the cooperation between human and animal health services.