‘One Health’ is to be one of the priority areas that are to be strengthened using the 15,000 crore INR package recently approved by the Union Cabinet.
About One Health
One Health is an approach in healthcare to ‘designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes’. It is an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to tackle disease threat.
One Health Initiative in India
The One Health Initiative in India was introduced during the One Health India Conference of 2019 that was conducted in Delhi. The Department of Biotechnology was involved in the launch. It is an ‘intersectoral approach to tackling the most urgent health threats in India and across the South Asia region’. It gave the 10 point One Health Roadmap (OHR).
10 Point OHR
- Review, update and document the current disease burden.
- Identify emerging areas of concern.
- Promote basic and applied research.
- Capacity building in human resources.
- Capacity building and improvement of infrastructure for research, health and diagnosis.
- Share information on disease burden, challenges, research, etc.
- Explore opportunities and promote partnership through scientific collaboration, inter-sectoral exchange programs, etc.
- Evolve with practical governance, policy mechanism and regulation.
- Incentivize OHR through funding, reward mechanisms and intellectual rights protection.
- Create and implement a One Health communication and outreach plan.