Context
The Government of India's Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD) has launched a pilot project in Uttarakhand to implement the One Health Framework.
Key-points
- The objective of the One Health Support Unit is to develop a One Health roadmap based on the experience gained from the pilot project’s implementation.
- An Inter-ministerial One Health committee has also been established that will help in the One Health Support Unit’s implementation.
- A Project Steering Committee (PSC) has also been constituted.
- Based on this committee’s recommendations, the district and state level one health committees need to be constituted.
- The implementation of the One Health Support Unit would be led by an inter-ministerial One Health committee chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.
- The Pilot project was launched by the Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying.
- The Unit’s main goal is to create a national One Health roadmap based on the lessons learned during the pilot project’s deployment.
What is One Health Concept?
- One Health concept is a worldwide strategy for expanding interdisciplinary collaborations and communications in all aspects of health care for people, animals, and the environment.
- The father of modern pathology, Rudolf Virchow, emphasised in 1856 that there are essentially no dividing lines between animal and human medicine.
- One Health approach identifies that zoonotic diseases, environmental pressures, food security, anti-microbial resistance, and health threats of animals and humans are all inter-related.
- Studies indicate that more than two-thirds of existing and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic.
- It recognizes that a stand-alone approach will not work and that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment.
- In other cases, they can be transferred between animals and humans, and vice versa, when the pathogen in question originates in any life form but circumvents the species barrier.
- Another category of diseases, “anthropozoonotic” infections, gets transferred from humans to animals.
