Makes information and awareness available on zoonotic infections like rabies, leptospirosis and Japanese encephalitis
It was in the wake of the avian influenza A/H5N1 outbreak that the world realised the different ways in which they were vulnerable to and at-risk of zoonotic infections (diseases of animals that are communicable to man). Apart from policy and programmatic interventions, a need was felt to step-up advocacy and communication efforts. The Public Health Foundation of India responded by setting up the Roadmap to Combat Zoonoses in India’s (RCZI) Initiative in March 2009 as an intersectoral collaboration bringing together human, veterinary and wildlife sections to work in the area of research, capacity building and advocacy/ health promotion on zoonoses. As part of this broader agenda, they have today launched an exhaustive web resource in the form of the RCZI website, with support from the World Health Organization Country Office for India.
This public information website will address key concerns of policy makers, researchers, veterinarians, public health professionals and the general population. It has information on priority zoonoses - a list of nine zoonotic diseases that are of relevance to India, general information on how zoonoses spread and what one can do to control and prevent them, videos and a blog which will host expert opinion, apart from others. It will be regularly updated with facts, situation analysis, reports, studies and developments across the world, with special focus on the South East Asia region. It will also carry updates on ‘One Health’ developments, which is a global movement that has over 30 years emerged as a potential strategy for combating zoonoses through collaborative effort.
Globally, zoonoses are said to account for 60% of all infectious disease pathogens and 75% of all emerging pathogens. Several international epidemics like SARS, Avian influenza, Swine flu, Nipah and ebola have been hypothesized as being of animal origins. While the most common and well known zoonoses are rabies, brucellosis and anthrax, few know that HIV/AIDS too is a zoonotic infection.
Lack of information, ignorance and simple tools to protect and safeguard their interests exposes the rural poor to loss of life and livelihood, since they subsist on income that comes from agriculture and livestock. Unfortunately, zoonoses have seldom been treated as an independent category in classical public health research and interventions. In countries like India, apart from an abysmally low level of awareness, there is very little evidence that can help guide public policy on diseases that jump across the species barrier.
“A recent research carried out by PHFI showed that it is only a small percentage of people, even in our medical colleges, who know what exactly zoonoses are. Given the fact that 70% of our population still lives in rural India and many urban slums continue to be a hotbed of disease and infection, we must take stock of the common ways in which diseases spread. The RCZI website is a definitive step that will strengthen our understanding of how diseases spread from animals to humans. It is an interesting subject and one which has strong ramifications on multiple sectors,” said, Dr K Srinath Reddy, President, PHFI.
The site can be accessed on http://www.phfi.org/zoonoses
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About PHFI
The Public Health Foundation of India was set up in March 2006 as a public private partnership that collaboratively evolved through consultations with multiple government and private organisations. It was set up in response to redress the limited institutional capacity in India for strengthening training, research and policy development in the area of public health. The Foundation focuses on broad dimensions of public health that encompass promotive, preventive and therapeutic services, many of which are frequently lost sight of in policy planning and popular understanding.