Health, disease & one-health in current affairs
Health, disease surveillance and the One Health approach for UPSC GS-3, mapping ICMR, NCDC, zoonoses and pandemic governance onto current affairs.
Where this sits in the UPSC scheme
Health and disease occupy a permanent place in GS Paper III ('Science and Technology — developments and applications and effects in everyday life') and GS Paper II (governance, health as a development sector, international institutions). In Prelims, the topic surfaces as factual questions on pathogens, vaccine platforms, government programmes and global health bodies. The COVID-19 pandemic made this a guaranteed theme: UPSC has repeatedly tested mRNA technology, gene sequencing, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the institutional architecture of disease surveillance.
How it is tested
Prelims (factual recall): Expect statement-matching on diseases and vectors (e.g. Nipah — fruit bats; Kyasanur Forest Disease — ticks; Zika — Aedes aegypti), on vaccine platforms (mRNA, viral-vector, subunit, inactivated), and on bodies such as ICMR, NCDC, GAVI and the WHO. A 2021 Prelims question probed monoclonal antibodies; questions on gene-editing and CRISPR recur.
Mains (analytical): GS-3 questions ask you to evaluate India's pandemic preparedness, analyse the One Health framework, or discuss antimicrobial resistance as a security threat. The 2020 paper asked about COVID-19's impact; examiners reward candidates who connect a scientific mechanism to a governance prescription.
The high-yield spine to retain
- One Health — the WHO/FAO/WOAH/UNEP Quadripartite definition (2021): an integrated approach recognising that human, animal, plant and environmental health are interdependent. Roughly 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic.
- India's institutions — the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR, 1911), the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) running the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP, 2004), and the National One Health Mission approved by the Cabinet in 2023.
- Legal backbone — the colonial Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 (invoked nationwide in March 2020), the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (the actual legal vehicle for the 2020 lockdown), and the proposed Public Health (Prevention, Control and Management of Epidemics) Bill intended to replace the 1897 Act.
- Global governance — the International Health Regulations (2005), amended in 2024, and the WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted by the World Health Assembly in May 2025.
Memorise three dated instances you can deploy as evidence: the 2018 and 2023 Nipah outbreaks in Kerala, the COVID-19 declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020, and the mpox PHEIC of 14 August 2024. These let you anchor abstract arguments in concrete, datable fact — exactly what raises a Mains answer from average to distinction.