Women veterinarians boost biosecurity training for Indian farmers

Zoonotic diseases remain a significant public health threat in India, where a dense population and an agricultural economy make human–animal interactions frequent. Despite policy initiatives promoting One Health approaches, barriers such as limited awareness and inadequate biosecurity practices persist. A study published on 26 August 2026 in Frontiers in Public Health starts from a specific diagnosis: women farmers play crucial but under-recognised roles in livestock management and have limited access to training because they engage little with male veterinary professionals, who primarily conduct field visits. Women veterinary health professionals, in turn, can engage better with women farmers but face their own barriers to fieldwork positions and to training for professional growth.

The solution designed was a cascade training model. In the first stage, women veterinary health professionals were trained in biosafety, biosecurity, One Health and community engagement, and equipped with tools to train women farmers. In the second, those professionals ran local sessions for farmers, using case studies and games. Acquired knowledge was measured through pre- and post-training assessments and focus group discussions.

Thirty-eight women veterinary health professionals were trained; their knowledge scores improved from 10.6 (± 2.49) to 11.3 (± 2.47) on the same questions. The focus groups showed they understood the farmers' knowledge and the issues they faced, and produced three themes on building farmers' capacity: knowledge gaps and high-risk practices, structural and sociocultural barriers, and pathways for effective community engagement and knowledge transfer. Of the 152 women farmers trained, 79.9% could identify clinical signs of animal sickness and 85.9% recognised integrated prevention practices; even so, gaps in zoonotic disease awareness and sanitation practices were evident. The authors conclude that engaging women professionals as both practitioners and trainers can advance community-level biosecurity and disease detection, and argue that women-centred approaches should be embedded in national One Health strategies.

The programme's logic rests on earlier studies. In 2020, a paper in EcoHealth described, in the rural Mnisi community of Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, residents' roles and responsibilities in the tasks identified as critical control points for pathogen exposure, broken down by gender. Male gender-typed tasks included livestock and poultry husbandry, hunting and slaughtering wildlife, and rodent control; female gender-typed tasks included animal-sourced food preparation, domestic cleaning and maintenance, and caregiving to children and ill family members. Because the tasks are gender specific, exposure and transmission patterns may be too, and the authors recommended gender-disaggregated analysis for risk mitigation.

A perspective paper published in 2025 in Research Directions: One Health used Rift Valley fever as a case: the literature focuses on male exposure because certain occupational roles are male dominated and neglects women's varied responsibilities in livestock care; studies often lack sex-disaggregated data; and social norms limit women's autonomy in livestock ownership, vaccination decisions and healthcare access. Programmes involving women, the authors cite, led to changes in norms and greater access to markets and veterinary care for female farmers.

For veterinary training, the set suggests a simple question to include in any extension programme: who, on the farm, performs the task you want to change, and who is receiving the advice. When the two answers do not match, the training may be reaching the wrong person.