-Down to Earth Document emphasises on importance of a ‘One-Health’ approach to manage and prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks and pandemics About 60 per cent of known infectious diseases in humans and 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to a new report published recently by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Preventing the Next Pandemic:Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain...

-The Hindu Business Line India’s over-dependence on private players for vaccines is promoting irrational use and restricting access that leads to unacceptable fatalities The death of an eight-year-old girl, Anju, this August after denial of anti-Rabies vaccine at Agra’s Sarojini Naidu Medical College (SNMC) is followed by the admission by Health Ministry that fatality rate for Rabies in India is 100 per cent. Although the circumstance of Anju’s death is particularly Kafkaesque...

-The Telegraph For a country with more free-roaming dogs than the entire population of Australia, India fares poorly in tackling Rabies Arnav, the seven-year-old son of a Mumbai police constable, suffered serious bites on his face and body by a rabid dog in 2018. He was taken to four different hospitals before being properly diagnosed; he passed away shortly after. His case is just one among the 20,000 annual canine-origin human Rabies...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's apex animal welfare agency has proclaimed that allowing stray animals such as cats, dogs, monkeys and cattle to roam the streets amounts to cruelty and told the states to create animal shelters, among other steps, or face legal action. The Animal Welfare Board of India, a unit of the Union environment ministry, has sent an advisory to the states seeking action by local municipal authorities to provide...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Dengue, the mosquito-borne disease which hits India hard every year, is estimated to cost the world a whopping $8.9 billion annually. That's higher than many major infectious diseases including cholera, canine Rabies and rotavirus gastroenteritis, medical journal Lancet has said quoting a new study. India shares a significant burden of the total cost. Last year, when there was an unusual surge in dengue cases in India...