- India is battling several ongoing outbreaks like Monekypox, tomato fever, zika virus and more.
- However, the country has been successful in curbing major epidemics like malaria, plague, leprosy and cholera in the past.
- Increase in testing and surveillance after Covid-19 believed to be a major reason for so many outbreaks in India.
Covid-19, monkeypox, swine flu, tomato fever — India is currently battling multiple outbreaks across cities and states. Infectious diseases remain one of the major causes of human and animal morbidity and mortality in the country.
Despite several outbreaks and diseases in the past as well, the country has been successful in curbing major epidemics like malaria, plague, leprosy and cholera.
“In the past 50 years, researchers have identified about 1,500 new pathogens. Of them, about half are viruses, and over 75% of these are zoonoses – i.e. they have animal reservoirs from which they spread in humans,” Indian virologist Shahid Jameel
said.
India is currently seeing the reemergence of various diseases like monkeypox, zika virus etc.
But why are we seeing so many viral disease outbreaks suddenly? The more optimistic answer to this could be the spurt in testing of these viruses after Covid-19, said Jameel.
Another aspect to note is that Kerala is one state where almost all viruses like Covid, monkeypox, Nipah surfaced first in india. Experts believe that higher surveillance could be the major reason behind this.
Other than Covid-19, these are some of the current outbreaks in India —