Functional Healthcare to Stop Pandemics

ET Editorials

The Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala is the latest instance of a zoonotic disease (in which the pathogen is transmitted from animals to humans) outbreak. Though authorities have contained its spread, the Nipah virus outbreak must serve as a wake-up call to improve public health delivery systems and for focusing attention on ensuring ecological integrity of habitats.

Agriculture and urbanisation have encroached on forests, shrinking the buffers separating wildlife from humans. The result is a dramatic rise in opportunities for easy transmission of pathogens from wild animals to humans. Experts say that the periodicity, intensity and geographical spread of zoonotic diseases will rise with climate change. This calls for both preventive and reactive measures: ensuring ecological integrity and improving the healthcare system. Protecting and restoring the natural habitat of wildlife would stem the transmission of pathogens. The stray animal population of cows, monkeys, dogs and cats, especially in densely populated areas, must be brought down. It is not possible to completely limit zoonotic diseases; so, a robust healthcare system is crucial, complete with surveillance capability, for local authorities to respond fast and seek out support from specialised agencies, as happened in Kerala. What is called for is a robust network of staffed and stocked primary care centres, linked to secondary and tertiary care centres, along with the capacity to mobilise the affected community to preventive action.

India must lay special emphasis on developing vaccines as well. India has the human and scientific resources required to produce low-cost vaccines whose production can be ratcheted up swiftly for mass deployment, when an emergency strikes. The Nipah outbreak is a wake-up call.