India’s ‘One Health’ approach — to integrate the health of people, animals and the environment — is crucial in addressing complex health challenges such as zoonotic diseases, said Alka Upadhyaya, Secretary, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.
At the Deloitte Government Summit in New Delhi on Thursday, she said that a coordination team has been formed to apprise the Health Ministry on data and observations related to zoonotic diseases, health of livestock and so on.
Post Covid, there is growing awareness about such zoonotic diseases and how they “can hold the work to ransom”.
A zoonosis or zoonotic disease is caused by a pathogen that can jump from a non-human to a human and vice versa. Major modern diseases such as ebola and salmonellosis are zoonoses.
“Concern persists about transmission of diseases from wild to livestock and on to humans. Thankfully, we now have the One Health programme. Coordination teams have been set up with the Health Department and we are working on it. If you look at the data, zoonotic diseases have spread by three times (globally) in the last decade,” she said.
Upadhyaya said that new opportunities are emerging in segments like livestock insurance and livestock insurance claims; as India adopts large farms (landholding for farming), like in the West, use of mechanisation will go up. The need for entrepreneurs will also increase in the sector, she said.