Nagpur: The National Institute of Zoonosis (NIZ) has faced an uncertain future ever since the central government announced the institute in city. The situation worsened recently, when the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) withdrew support to the institute. ICAR had been the parent body to manage, fund and direct activities of NIZ.The project started in the form of a Centre of Excellence in Zoonosis (CEZ) with three educational and research institutes as its arms — Nagpur Veterinary College (NVC), Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS), Sewagram, and Clinical Research Laboratory of Central India Institute of Medical Sciences (CIIMS). Of these, NVC, which is governed by the Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University (Mafsu), comes under ICAR, and forms the animal component of research on zoonotic diseases. The other two represent the human component of the project, and are regulated by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).The CEZ has been operating since 2015-16, and over the years it has developed the requisite infrastructure, expertise, staff and research facilities. Now, though the CEZ has got a year’s extension, unless the CEZ gets upgraded into NIZ this year, the project will face closure as ICAR has withdrawn from CEZ activities. This means CEZ can no longer study animal component of zoonotic diseases — which will be a big setback to NIZ.Dr Sandeep Chaudhari, project in-charge of Mafsu, told TOI that the centre got Rs4.37crore for three years to procure equipment, manpower etc. It has created state of the art infrastructure along with CEZ’s two arms, CIIMS and MGIMS. “All three bodies have put in their heart and soul into bringing the centre to an institute level. Above all, Mafsu has allocated four acres to the institute. Now, if the central government ends the project at the end of the yearlong extension, the entire effort by all three arms will be doomed,” said Chaudhari.Explaining the need and relevance of the project, Dr Chaudhari said there are 876 zoonotic diseases, those which are common to animals and man, included bovine tuberculosis. “The centre has worked well on diseases like leptospirosis, listeriosis, scrub typhus, and brucellosis. We could find that scrub typhus was detected in many human abortions. We could establish that brucellosis was responsible for male sterility in humans. The number of emerging zoonotic diseases, including the Nipah virus, is increasing fast,” he said.Rajpal Kashyap from CIIMS lab has developed 12 kits for three zoonotic diseases. MGIMS has studied the epidemiology of leptospirosis, scrub typhus and conducted surveillance of these diseases in Wardha district at both community level as well as at tertiary Kasturba Hospital. It has also developed a one-health centre and a solar containment biosafety unit under the project.Besides Dr Chaudhari from Mafsu, the CEZ team comprises Dr NV Kurkure, Dr SW Kolte, Dr WA Khan, Dr SP Shinde, Dr Ajay Poharakar, Dr NV Kalorey, Dr S Barbuddhe, and Dr Rahul Narang from MGIMS, and Rajpal Kashyap from CIIMS.

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