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.