Higher Education Council urges Universities to imbibe ‘One Health’ approach in academics
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The multi-sectoral idea entails a scientific research of human-animal-environmental interactions.
Kerala State Higher Education Council Vice-Chairman P.M. Rajan Gurukkal has urged Universities to align their tutorial programmes with the ‘One Health’ approach.
Gaining traction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the specter of different zoonotic ailments to world well being, the multi-sectoral idea entails a scientific research of human-animal-environmental interactions.
The approach got here into public discourse after its presentation in the Tripartite Zoonoses Guide (TZG) that was collectively developed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in 2019.
Prof. Gurukkal discovered immense significance for the notion at a time when Kerala witnessed a grim COVID-19 situation with the State authorities implementing a lock down in a bid to rein in the pandemic. A couple of years in the past, the State had additionally battled a Nipah virus outbreak whose origin was subsequently traced to contaminated fruit bats in Kozhikode.
“Efforts by just one sector cannot prevent the problem. The onus is on all sectors including public health, animal health, plant health and the environment to ensure their professionals, be it doctors, scientists, environmental engineers, urban planners or natural resource managers, were aware that same microbes infect animals and humans in the shared ecosystems. They must be insightful into linkages between ‘One-Health Approach’ and the current techno-economic developments,” he stated.
The eminent academician additionally felt Universities and analysis establishments ought to orient their graduates in tune with the idea to instil data on human-animal-environmental interactions and penalties harming each other. Powerful drivers like local weather change, inhabitants development, land diversion, deforestation, and environmental alterations lead to volatility amongst people, animals, and microbes. This predicament had potential to generate a zoonoses vector ecology, he cautioned.
According to him the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) and Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) have main roles to tackle the life-threatening challenges rising on the human-animal interface. Human-wildlife conflicts trigger the emergence and re-emergence of many ailments.
“It is heartening that the State government is seriously considering the Higher Education Council’s advice to create a Wildlife Science faculty at KVASU to promote of research on the Western Ghats Forest and Tribal interface from the ‘One Health’ perspective. Indeed, this will help focus human development interference with the wildlife that often transgresses the symbiotic boundary and prevent the outbreaks of zoonoses,” Prof. Gurukkal stated.
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