India's One Health Mission is expanding disease surveillance across human, animal and environmental systems. According to information cited by the Indian Council of Medical Research, wastewater surveillance for 13 pathogens is operating across 47 cities, with further expansion planned.
The approach matters because outbreaks do not respect administrative silos. Zoonotic diseases can move between animals and people, while wastewater can provide an early population-level signal of circulating pathogens before hospitals see the full burden. Genomic and metagenomic capacity can then help identify how organisms are changing.
Separately, the Union Home Ministry is working on a National Biosecurity Policy. That policy should not be conflated with the One Health programme itself, but the two reflect the same wider challenge: building institutions that can detect and respond to biological risk before it becomes a national emergency.