ationship with the forest built on longterm association with the area,” Srinivas told Mongabay-India.
Template for ‘One Health’
The Western Ghats has lost evergreen forest cover from 16 to 11 percent from 1985–2018 due to human-caused actions. A simulation published in 2019 predicts the region will have merely 10 percent evergreen cover (in protected areas) in 10 years with agriculture (17 percent), plantations (40 percent) and built-up area (five percent) shaping the landscape in the future. In a recent publication, more than 200 medical journals warned that health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades.
In 2019, India launched its One Health initiative, an intersectoral approach to tackling the most urgent health threats in the region, with a focus on low and middle-income countries across the south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, based on WHO’s framework on the approach.
For the One Health approach to work on the ground, Srinivas argues for a working model. “We have been struggling with One Health on the ground while it is widely used in global literature. The human health department has not sufficiently engaged with the One Health approach; we have to convey what it is in a more meaningful way to make it practical for people on the ground.”
“We need working models of this surveillance within the rural districts where One Health is put into practice. It needs a template. For example, it could involve setting up a secretary-level committee for each state which meets every year to review a priority list of diseases for that state,” adds Srinivas.
He also emphasised an ecological approach to One Health, for example, a One Health committee for the Western Ghats, Trans-Himalayas and other landscapes could be set up to drum up necessary attention.
Kiran S.K., deputy director (KFD Nodal officer) of Virus Diagnostic Laboratory, Shivamogga, Karnataka explains that coordination with biodiversity boards at the village level is the way ahead in surveillance of wildlife and forest loss under the One Health approach. “For example, it can give us information if the numbers of animals that are hosts of the tick-borne virus are increasing or decreasing. It also gives the local communities a sense of responsibility and we can get good information from them because most of the affected villages are situated deep inside the forests,” Kiran said.
So far, the coordination is limited at the taluk and district levels. In 2018-2019, 445 human cases of the KFD were reported in Karnataka which dropped to 287 in 2019-2020; 2020-2021 was a “mild year” with 20 to 22 cases. Kiran says sensitisation drives and better surveillance at the village level were contributing factors to the decline of reported cases.
Working with affected communities
“Earlier people used to notice the death of monkeys but not report. We started getting good information about monkey deaths and there was good vaccination coverage for the people in the last couple of years. Nature has also been kind to us. We had good rains and tick density seems to have come down in the last few years,” said Kiran.
Mujeeb Rahman, a social scientist who works with the KFD-affected communities in Karnataka and Kerala as part of the India-UK MonkeyFeverRisk project says earlier, monkey carcasses would be burned or buried by the farmers. “This put them at greater risk of contracting the KFD as monkeys are hosts for the KFD, and their carcasses and immediate vicinity would have an abundance of infected ticks. However, communities that are aware of these aspects, inform both the forest and health department and also take precautions,” said Rahman.
“Although forest use and forest-related occupations are correlated with the KFD, it has to be kept in mind that the local communities in these areas who contract the KFD are often marginalised groups with few viable alternatives with respect to livelihoods,” Rahman, a research associate at the Ashoka Tru