India's scientists battle red tape in the fight to prevent the next deadly pandemic

Researchers say it is only a matter of time before one of the zoonotic diseases they study sparks another pandemic, and proactive surveillance is critical, writes Vishwam Sankaran

- Vishwam Sankaran

In the late 1950s, people in the southern Indian town of Shimoga started reporting the mysterious deaths of dozens of monkeys in the evergreen forests of the district. Soon people in the villages surrounding the forest also began reporting high fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, body pain, headache, and blood in the stool. There were a few deaths, too, prompting officials to initiate a surveillance project, suspecting that this deadly disease was coming from birds.

Scientists from India’s then newly established Virus Research Centre started studying birds and ticks in the area to try to identify what was causing the haemorrhagic fever.

“That’s when they realised it was a new viral disease – the Kyasanur Forest disease (KFD), which was being transmitted by some of the ticks there – and that the primate populations over there were reservoirs of the KFD virus,” says Pranav Pandit, a veterinary epidemiologist from the One Health Institute at UC Davis.

“The Virus Research Centre expanded its scope and was redesignated as the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune,” Dr Pandit says, adding that there is an urgent need to survey more wildlife across different parts of India for the deadly pathogens they may harbour.

The way the NIV was set up has deep roots in an understanding of the complex interactions between ecology, wildlife, animal health and human health, in what is being heralded as the “One Health” approach for studying zoonotic diseases – that is, diseases that jump from animals to humans.