One Health surveillance of certain zoonotic bacterial pathogens in South Asia: current status, challenges, and future directions

Résumé fourni par la source

Zoonotic bacterial pathogens impose a substantial and unevenly documented burden on public health, animal health, and food safety. South Asia is home to roughly a quarter of the world's people, and one of the densest livestock populations on earth, yet the epidemiology, antimicrobial resistance, and genomic diversity of its zoonotic bacteria remain poorly characterized. This mini-review synthesizes published evidence from 2000 to 2026 on six pathogen groups of regional priority: Brucella spp., Listeria spp., Klebsiella pneumoniae, Leptospira spp., Bacillus anthracis, and Salmonella spp., with Campylobacter spp. considered alongside Salmonella across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Evidence is distributed unevenly across these five countries. Brucellosis seroprevalence ranges from 2.0–18.75% in Pakistani livestock, 15% in Nepalese sheep, and 8.4% among Sri Lankan adults. Human leptospirosis in Sri Lanka is estimated at 300.6 per 100,000 population, with a 7.0% case fatality rate. In Bangladesh, 26 cutaneous anthrax outbreaks produced 1,210 suspected human cases between 2013 and 2016. Resistance is severe where measured: 73.5% of Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from a referral hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, were multidrug-resistant (MDR), and 97.1% of Campylobacter isolates from Bangladeshi chicken farms met MDR criteria. Sequencing capacity exists in the region and has been applied to typhoidal Salmonella in Bangladesh and Nepal, to Brucella melitensis and Listeria monocytogenes in India, to Leptospira in Sri Lanka, and to clinical Klebsiella collections. However, every such study is a discrete research output; no country operates whole-genome sequencing-based surveillance spanning the human, animal, food, and environmental sectors for the pathogens reviewed here. The gap is therefore one of integration and governance rather than of technology alone. A staged, costed roadmap is proposed, with priority actions, responsible institutions, and indicative timelines, drawing on models from other low- and middle-income regions where genomic surveillance has been established under comparable constraints.

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