Efficacy of Wastewater surveillance in managing Various health crisis
- Wastewater-based health surveillance or environmental surveillance is an excellent tool for tracking the presence of different pathogens in the environment.
Significance of Wastewater-based health surveillance
- Infected or asymptomatic individuals shed the virus via faucal route four-seven days in advance of actual testing.
- This means an increase in viral load in sewage water.
- It can complement routine diagnostic surveillance by capturing near real-time virus circulation at community level.
- It can help in Hotspot identification
- Viral load and simultaneously sequenced samples in real-time were monitored to show which variant(s) was causing the increase in cases.
- Early emergence of a variant in wastewater implies that a significant proportion of individuals in the community are infected with that variant and shedding the virus.
Way ahead
- Wastewater surveillance played a crucial role in the eradication of poliovirus in India in 2012.
- Scale-up environmental surveillance beyond poliovirus and SARS-CoV-2 virus to pan-pathogen surveillance and integrate with main healthcare system.
- It can predict neglected and emerging diseases.
Conclusion
- Establish environmental surveillance for monitoring and an early-warning system for detecting multi-pathogens.
- As an evidence-based approach, it is very useful for predicting risks to human as well as animal health.
- We need a One Health approach to recognize the connection b/w the health of humans, animals and the environment.