One Health in India is not a single building or department, a national effort to treat human health, animal health, and environmental wellbeing as deeply interconnected, rather than separate silos.
The umbrella under which this approach operates in India is the National One Health Mission. Its coordinating structure draws together multiple ministries and agencies across health, animal husbandry, environment, and science. The mission is being anchored by a newly approved institute, the National Institute of One Health, located in Nagpur, which will serve as a central node to coordinate One Health activities nationally.
What does One Health do?
It aims to detect, prevent and respond to emerging threats that involve humans, animals, or the environment, from zoonotic diseases to antimicrobial resistance, to environmental contamination. The mission sets up cross-sector surveillance: labs (including high-biosafety ones), monitoring systems, rapid response to outbreaks, and shared data across sectors so that a disease in livestock or wildlife doesnât turn into a human crisis.
Beyond surveillance and outbreak response, One Health also advocates for sustainable policies: better veterinary care, environmental protection, safe food and water, and public awareness on risk factors crossing human-animal-environment boundaries. In a country like India, with dense population, large livestock numbers, rich biodiversity and expanding human-animal interactions â this integrated approach isnât just an ideal, but a necessity.
What are the major projects One Health has handled that you are aware of?
One Health in India has already influenced several major national initiatives, even before the formal mission structure took shape. Key projects include Nipah virus surveillance in Kerala, where human, animal, and bat surveillance teams worked together to trace spillover pathways. The AMR Containment Programme integrates monitoring of antibiotic resistance across humans, livestock, food chains, and the environment. During COVID-19, One Health principles guided wildlife trade monitoring and genomic surveillance. India has also implemented FMD control in cattle, avian influenza outbreak coordination, and rabies elimination campaigns, all requiring cross-sector collaboration. These projects reflect how One Health strengthens preparedness by uniting public health, veterinary science, and environmental systems.
But I think on ground the situation is totally different.Being in tertiary care hospital I can see the loop holes in management to implement such projects in real time.
Well written post!I can speak for my state, Kerala, where nearly 2.5 lakh community volunteers have already been trained to detect zoonotic threats early, and an integrated testing system now links human-health, veterinary, and environmental labs for rapid outbreak response. Keralaâs âOne Healthâ framework has been developed as a benchmark for other states, and I truly feel proud of the âKerala modelâ for âone healthâ that our state has built.
One Health in India is paving its way to future high-tech and skill-driven methods and solutions to deal with emergency and/or adverse situations (for animals, human beings and environment). Under this mission, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme has been been updated to digitalization, laboratory network is widened to screen and detect pathogens across environment and surrounding areas, IDEA-ONE National One-Health Hackathon is being organized to invite innovative ideas and collaboration among youth to strengthen this mission with skills and technology, and many other related initiatives are under process.
Yes, one of the key drivers of One Health is multi-sectoral collaboration. This aspect has led to improvement in communication among the various stakeholders and has led to the achievement of several programs which require inter-sectoral collaboration.
Yes, that is also true. One such implementation One Health is still trying to achieve is AMR stewardship in many hospitals especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. They need wider reach of their programs to move towards prevention of antimicrobial resistance.