Animal Husbandry Minister J. Chinchurani has reiterated the need to strengthen public healthcare systems by realising the One Health approach in view of the recurrence of zoonotic diseases like Nipah.
With the threat of zoonoses increasing globally, maintenance of public health hinged on preservation of ecological, forest, wildlife, and animal health, she added.
In a statement issued here on Tuesday, Ms. Chinchurani said the State had successfully mitigated the fourth occurrence of Nipah through holistic interventional measures. The outbreak also taught several lessons, one being the futility in preventing zoonotic diseases with preventive measures and drugs that were limited to human beings.
“Protecting the health of animals and their habitats is crucial to the control of zoonoses as underscored in the concept of One Health,” she said.
While pointing out there was still no clarity on how the pathogenic virus had reached the first patient who died on August 30 and which animal species could have acted as the intermediate host, the Minister said earlier studies conducted in Kerala and other countries that witnessed Nipah outbreaks had found that the virus was found to be in circulation in fruit bats.
The Minister added the State had been creating a new model to mitigate the Nipah outbreak by undertaking continuous monitoring and prevention measures involving Animal Husbandry, Health, and Environment departments. A Central team comprising scientists from Bhopal and Bengaluru had also been collaborating with the State Institute for Animal Diseases for the purpose.
Efforts were still under way to collect samples from animals including pigs from the affected areas to send them to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases in Bhopal.
