Wild Surakshe - Building Community Resilience Against Disease Outbreaks in the Western Ghats

Our world is facing an unprecedented health emergency with the COVID-19 outbreak. The current pandemic has exposed the fragility of our public health systems and neglect of our most vulnerable communities’. Along with COVID-19, almost 75% of all emerging diseases in the 21st century have an origin traceable to wild animals. Those most likely to bear the brunt of these emerging diseases are therefore the communities living in and around wildlife reserves. In India, such communities are already marginalised. They lack access to proper health care, information, education and resources! Most importantly, they lack awareness. After all, how can they prevent something that they don’t understand?

Wild Surakshe (Safety) is a public safety and community engagement program focusing on preventing the spread of many zoontics including COVID-19 and stopping future disease outbreaks. Our program will assist communities living in and around wildlife reserves to understand and combat zoonotic diseases and human-wildlife conflict incidents. We will build collaborative networks to aid these communities and access government aid, emergency service providers, and healthcare.

Wild Surakshe connects and collaborates with communities isolated. We plan to reach 500 vulnerable villages surrounding wildlife reserves and engage people, village panchayats, government staff and community organisations. Over the next year, in Karnataka, our initiative will have widespread impact at the grass-root level by focusing on people living close to 23 wildlife reserves across Western Ghats. With your support we want to expand this program to people living in and around wildlife reserves in Maharashtra, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.