Context: Five years after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that likely jumped from bats to humans, the central government is reviewing an interim draft of a National Wildlife Health Policy (NWHP).
Relevance of the Topic:Prelims: National Wildlife Health Policy; National One Health Mission.
Key Components of the National Wildlife Health Policy
- NWHP proposes a comprehensive surveillance system to monitor wildlife health across terrestrial, marine, and avian ecosystems.
- The policy would be aligned with the National One Health Mission to coordinate efforts for pandemic preparedness and integrated disease control.
- National Referral Centre for Wildlife (NRC-W) will act as a referral centre to investigate wildlife mortalities and outbreak events. It will facilitate disease diagnostics, treatments, and could be one of the nodal authorities for surveillance.
- National Wildlife Health Database can act as a centralised repository of real-time or near-time surveillance data, historical data along with databases from animal husbandry and human health.
- Wildlife Health Information System has been proposed to streamline disease surveillance, facility-level reporting and spatial-temporal data.
- Establishment of Satellite Diagnostic laboratories near critical forest habitats will enhance timely disease detection.
- Improving vaccination among livestock near National Parks to mitigate zoonotic disease risks through community engagement.
Need of National Wildlife Health Policy:
- Over 60% of emerging infectious diseases impacting humans are getting transmitted from animals to humans.
- As per government data, India has a network of 1,014 protected areas which includes 106 national parks, 573 wildlife sanctuaries, 115 conservation reserves and 220 community reserves spread over 5.32% of its geographical area. Wildlife acts as a reservoir of pathogens and thus monitoring their health, in the wild and in captivity, has become an imperative.
Challenges in the Current Framework:
- Fragmented disease surveillance: Wildlife health monitoring is spread across multiple ministries (Environment, Agriculture, and Animal Husbandry), leading to poor coordination and data exchange.
- Lack of centralised wildlife health database: No unified system exists to track real-time disease outbreaks, making early detection and response difficult.
- Limited diagnostic infrastructure: India lacks specialised wildlife disease labs, delaying diagnosis and treatment of emerging infections.
- Inadequate capacity: Forest officials and veterinarians in wildlife areas often lack training and resources for disease detection and management.
- Zoonotic spillover risk: Unchecked human-wildlife interactions (livestock grazing near forests, illegal wildlife trade) increase the risk of zoonotic diseases like Covid-19.
- Regulatory gaps: No specific legal framework for wildlife health management; existing laws (Wildlife Protection Act) focus more on conservation than disease prevention.
- Limited community involvement: Lack of awareness and participation from local communities in disease prevention, such as vaccinating livestock near protected areas.
National One Health Mission:
- Launched in 2022.
- Aim: To coordinate across Ministries in achieving overall pandemic preparedness and integrated disease control against priority diseases of both human and animal sectors.
- The mission will help in institutionalising the 'One Health' approach. One Health recognises that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and shared environment.
- Human and animal pandemic preparedness is a key pillar of the One Health Mission which relies on effective surveillance strategies, boosting research, innovation community engagement and data integration across sectors.
- One of the key goal is Creation of a network of BSL 3/4 labs:
- This network will play a critical role in preventing, detecting, and responding promptly to disease outbreaks across human, livestock and wildlife sectors.
- Currently there are 22 labs in this Network.
- This mission involves 13 ministries and departments, including the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) etc.
- National Institute for One Health in Nagpur will act as the coordinating body for national and international activities in the field of One Health.