West Bengal's state health department has directed every district to form a One Health committee, pulling veterinarians, food safety officers, forest officials and municipal administrators into a single structure for controlling diseases that spread between animals, people and the environment.

The guideline, issued by the health department and reported by Sangbad Pratidin, names the specific zoonotic risks the committees must address: Nipah, Ebola, rabies, leptospirosis, anthrax, brucellosis, avian influenza and scrub typhus. The state also plans to strengthen dengue and malaria monitoring by tracking mosquito breeding, stagnant water, weather conditions and environmental changes alongside clinical treatment.

Who sits on the committees?

The prescribed composition places disease surveillance inside a wider administrative framework rather than leaving it to hospitals alone. Each district committee will include:

• the district magistrate
• the chief medical officer of health
• the deputy director of the Animal Resources Development Department
• the principal of the district medical college
• the divisional forest officer
• the officer in charge of the veterinary laboratory
• a municipal officer
• the chairperson of the zilla parishad
• a rural development officer

The state's approach, as reported, recognizes that disease risks may originate in animals, the environment and agricultural produce, and may require coordinated investigation across departments. Researchers and medical professionals will also join the district-level teams.

What does this change for veterinarians?

For the veterinary profession in West Bengal, the order formalizes a seat at the district decision-making table. The deputy director of animal resources and the head of the veterinary laboratory now hold defined roles in identifying and breaking transmission chains for diseases such as avian influenza, anthrax and brucellosis — conditions where animal-side detection typically precedes any human case.

The committee structure also links disease surveillance to practical municipal and rural responsibilities: sanitation, water accumulation, waste management, food safety, animal health and environmental monitoring.

Siddhartha Joardar, a virus specialist and professor at the West Bengal University of Animal and Fishery Sciences, welcomed the decision. He said district-level One Health committees could help address zoonotic risks such as Nipah virus transmission associated with fruit bats, as well as the threat of antimicrobial resistance.

Joardar said the One Health approach gained international relevance after outbreaks including SARS, MERS and Ebola, and became especially important following the COVID-19 pandemic. He described the concept as one in which human, animal and environmental health are treated as interconnected rather than as separate administrative concerns.

What the guideline leaves open

The order's immediate significance is institutional: it assigns multiple departments a role in zoonotic disease control. But the guideline, as reported, does not specify a separate budget, meeting frequency, reporting deadline or district-wise implementation schedule. Operational powers, data-sharing arrangements and implementation milestones also remain undefined.

That gap matters for practitioners. Without a reporting cadence or funding line, the speed at which veterinary laboratory findings reach human health authorities will depend on how each district committee interprets its mandate.

The health department's guideline is the next step in establishing the committees across districts, and further operational details are expected to determine how quickly the structure translates into coordinated field response.