The Animal Husbandry Department observes July 6 as the World Zoonoses Day when dog owners visit Government Veterinary clinics or hospitals to get their pets vaccinated for Rabies. But there is more to Zoonoses Day than this.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines Zoonoses as diseases and infections that are naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans.
A zoonotic agent could be a bacterium, a virus, a fungus or other communicable disease agent. At least 61 per cent of all human pathogens are zoonotic. The zoonotics represent three-fourths of all emerging pathogens during the past decade.
Except for the newly emerging Zoonoses such as SARS and the highly pathogenic Bird Flu H5N1, the vast majority of Zoonotic infections are not given any importance by national and international health systems. WHO has, therefore, labelled them as neglected.
According to WHO, there are over 200 zoonotic diseases but nine of them are major diseases. Anthrax, animal influenza, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease), foodborne Zoonoses, haemorrhagic fevers, Leptospirosis, Prion diseases, Tularaemia and Variant Creutz-Jakob disease (vCJD) have been listed by WHO as “Neglected Zoonoses diseases”.
Influenza, food-borne Zoonoses, Tularaemia (spread through insect bites) are not taken seriously enough though they occur frequently. Stray cases of Anthrax and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were reported in the State this year.
GLEWS
Zoonoses are included in the list of diseases monitored by the Global Early Warning System for Major Animal Diseases (GLEWS).
GLEWS is a joint system that builds on the added value of combining and coordinating alert mechanisms of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and WHO. Networks from the International Community and stakeholders are linked to assist in early warning, preventing and controlling animal disease threats, said Assistant Veterinary Surgeon T. Saigopal.
Senior General Physician and epidemiologist T.V. Narayana Rao says that the number of Scrub Typhus cases keeps increasing every alternate year and cases of Leptospirosis spread by rodents and other wild and domestic species also keep surfacing once in a while.
A deeper knowledge about Zoonoses is therefore essential to check the spread of these diseases.
