One Health Philosophy Zoonotic Diseases | Burning Issues | PDF Download

Outbreaks of Zoonotic Diseases

• Widespread prevalence of avian influenza in poultry, or bird flu
• It was concern for human health that prompted the extreme reaction
• Similarly in 2003, SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome emanated suddenly in China and vanished soon.

Panic all around

• These outbreaks culminated emergency response
• Panic spread much faster than the virus.
• These events also brought forth the hitherto forgotten philosophy of One Health.
• Inter-connectivity among human health, the health of animals, and the environment.

One Health concept

• The World Organization of Animal Health, commonly known as OIE (an abbreviation of its French title), summarizes the One Health concept.
• It says that as “human health and animal health are interdependent
• All aspects of patients’ lives need to be considered including their environment; disease was a result of imbalance between man and environment.
• So One Health is not a new concept

Rise in outbreaks

• Greater contact with domestic and wild animals
• Climate change, deforestation and intensive farming
• According to the OIE, 60% of existing human infectious diseases are zoonotic
• Of the five new human diseases appearing every year, three originate in animals.
• It is estimated that zoonotic diseases account for nearly two billion cases per year

Care Required

• Humans require a regular diet of animal protein.
• This calls for strict health surveillance
• Thus, loss of food animals on account of poor health or disease too becomes a public health issue .

Global health

• The WHO was set up in 1948 to, among other objectives; promote cooperation to control human diseases.
• The cooperation and collaboration among nations to control and contain animal diseases
• This has been recognised as early as in 1924
• India has been at the forefront

India

• The size of India’s human and animal populations is almost the same
• A network of 1.90 lakh health institutions
• On the other hand, only 65,000 veterinary institutions tend to the health needs of 125.5 crore animals

Animal health system

• Private sector presence in veterinary services is close to being nonexistent.
• Unlike a physician, a veterinarian is always on a house call
• There could not be a stronger case for reinventing the entire animal husbandry sector to be able to reach every livestock farmer
• Early detection at animal source can prevent disease transmission to humans and introduction of pathogens into the food chain.

Way Forward

• Developing countries like India have much greater stake in strong One Health systems on account of agricultural systems
• Strengthening veterinary institutions
• Control zoonotic pathogens at their animal source.
• It calls not only for close collaboration at local, regional and global levels among veterinary, health and environmental governance, but also for greater investment in animal health infrastructure.

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