Climate Change, Emerging Infections and One Health: A Review of Climate-Resilient Epidemiological Surveillance in India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56450/JEFI.2026.v4i02.006Keywords:
Climate change, emerging infections, One Health, surveillance, India, health systems resilienceAbstract
Climate change is reshaping infectious disease risks through rising temperatures, extreme rainfall, flooding, drought, shifting vector ecology, water and food insecurity, ecosystem disruption and changing human-animal-environment interactions. These risks are highly relevant for India because of its climatic diversity, monsoon dependence, dense settlements, large livestock interface, forest-fringe populations, coastal vulnerability and uneven local health-system resilience. One Health provides an appropriate framework because climate-sensitive surveillance cannot depend only on human case reporting. It must integrate animal, environmental, entomological, laboratory and climate intelligence. India already has important institutional assets, including the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health, IDSP/IHIP, zoonoses surveillance platforms, the National One Health Mission, the VRDL network and field epidemiology training systems. However, these platforms remain only partly linked for routine climate-informed surveillance and response. This review discusses major climate-infection pathways, examines India’s current preparedness architecture, identifies implementation gaps, and proposes a practical agenda for building climate-resilient epidemiological surveillance through interoperable data systems, district risk profiling, joint risk assessment, sentinel surveillance, resilient laboratories and a climate-ready workforce.
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