Leptospirosis, a neglected tropical zoonotic disease of public health
importance: Multi-sectorial prioritization to control through “One
Health Approach in India: An integrative review”
Abstract
Negligence in healthcare system paves to become major cause for
occurrence and recurrence of most infectious diseases. Leptospirosis is
one among those neglected 17 tropical infections listed by WHO.
Leptospirosis is epidemic in tropical country like India and prevalent
throughout the nation. About 60% of human infections are of zoonotic
origin and 75% of these infections are emerging and re-emerging. The
pathogenic infection gets transmitted to humans by animals via infected
water bodies (indirect transmission) or by direct contact with them.
From the inferred data it can be concluded that people of different
occupations namely irrigation/ agricultural people, sewage workers,
fishermen, volunteers for natural disasters, people involved in fresh
water sports are susceptible to indirect transmission. In case of
direct/ indirect transmission via animals, veterinary healthcare service
providers, butchers, animal caretakers, etc., are susceptible for
acquiring the infection. Being zoonosis, the intervention or policy
making for controlling the infection must be multi-sectorial and
holistic. ‘One Health Concept’ is a holistic approach, which has been in
practice dating back to Hippocrates period and now gaining popularity.
The concept encompasses human, animal and environmental health equally
and facilitates in controlling infection by either controlling two or
all the factors. The study will review on imparting one health concept
as a suitable approach for tackling against the Leptospirosis infection
since this approach could possibly hinder the transmission cycle of the
infection that is almost believed to be impossible to manage. This
review extensively discusses about the major research gap that needs to
be addressed immediately to apply one health approach to control
leptospirosis and how to bring out relevant information with the limited
available data. The key inference area of transmission and one health
approach to control leptospiral infection is proposed and the
repercussions discussed in detail.