India to envision One Health movement for confronting emerging health threats: From concept to approach toward institutionalization

Abstract

The author's key role in advocating and leading One Health (OH) initiatives in India (especially in Kerala), review the need for and progress of OH from concept to approach and proposes its institutionalization as the way forward. India is currently facing many health threats such as antimicrobial resistance, environmental health hazards, and food safety risks and most importantly, zoonotic diseases such as Nipah, Avian Influenza, Scrub typhus, Congo fever, Kyasanur forest disease, COVID-19, and leptospirosis that grossly impact country's economy. The recent pandemics had exposed the gaps in public health policy and government is prepared to commit on the OH approach and to invest more on public health infrastructure. Further, as challenges have increased in recent years, OH approach was clearly advocated by the experts not only to cope up the pandemic but also to manage the infodemic by promoting the timely dissemination of accurate information. Right from the endorsement of OH in 2007 by India's Prime minister to the present fight against COVID-19 pandemic, the actions to control and manage the disease was ideally oriented toward a collaborative approach. Last year (2019), the representatives from relevant ministries and department had a ground-breaking dialog to develop charter and constitute a National policy on OH. Recently, Health Ministers of the Member States of the World Health Organization South-East Asia signed "Delhi declaration" where the key essence was to implement intersectoral coordination mechanisms following the "OH" approach. India's future policy intervention will emphasize on strengthening of integrated public health labs and contributing to building a national institutional platform for OH to boost research initiatives. Taking stock of OH happenings, resources, challenges, and priorities, the implementation strategy has been proposed across human, animal and environmental health. The article further highlights the key areas that need OH intervention in India, the country's progress in OH and the success stories of OH for a sustainable action to confront emerging health threats.

Implementation of ‘One Health’ approach in Kerala state, India – A systematic review

“…Nambiar (2020) noted that good multi‐sectorial collaboration was also demonstrated in the 2015 H5N1 outbreak in the state. To deal with the bird hosts, including chickens, ducks and other birds within a 1 km radius of the affected area, the Animal Health Department coordinated with other pertinent departments and planned and carried out their culling.…”

“…The local media provided updates on the situation and awareness about the risks and preventive measures, and the food safety department issued guidelines for the safe use of poultry products. The Forest Department assisted in the timely reporting of migratory birds’ deaths and carrying out their autopsies (Nambiar, 2020). These findings and accounts underscore the initiatives and success stories of OH in Kerala state.…”

“…India is deemed as one of the significant global hubs for diseases by experts (Kessler & Peterson, 2017). Although individual disease surveillance programmes at the human and animal levels, such as the IDSP and the National Animal Disease Reporting System, have been successful to a reasonable extent in recent years, they falter in regard to tracing the chain of transmission at the zoonotic interface (Nambiar, 2020). Another glaring gap is the lack of institutionalisation and missing organisational identity of OH.…”

“…Another glaring gap is the lack of institutionalisation and missing organisational identity of OH. Overall, inter‐sectorial communication and coordination, not just concerning OH, has also hitherto been a significant area of concern in India, especially with the governmental departments (Nambiar, 2020). Evaluation of contextual risks, identification of driving factors of disease emergence and actionable knowledge derived from multisource complex data are vital to shielding communities from potential threats.…”

One Health information management: health system reforms to support social well-being in Thailand

“…Research focused on OH has included many regions, such as the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Most of these studies were activities, training, and research [8,[11][12][13][14][15][16] from organizations, particularly universities, yet a few studies focused on policies [17]. In Asia, there are a select number of studies on OH, and there are a few policy-related studies connected to OH [16].…”