The National One Health Mission (NOHM) is a comprehensive scheme/initiative by the Government of India, not an Act or a Judgment, that adopts the global "One Health" concept. It was approved by the Prime Minister's Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) in its 21st meeting in 2022.
The mission originated to address the critical problem that approximately 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of emerging diseases in humans are zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the urgent need for a unified, cross-sectoral framework, shifting India from a reactive to an anticipatory public health model.
The mission works as a multi-ministerial programme led by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) serving as the nodal agency. Its mechanism is built on four key pillars: Research and Development for tools like vaccines, Clinical Readiness, Data Integration across human, animal, and environmental sectors, and Community Engagement. A key provision is the establishment of the National Institute of One Health in Nagpur, which will anchor and coordinate the mission's activities; the Union Cabinet approved the Director position for this institute in February 2024.
The NOHM connects to the global One Health approach, aligning India with the Quadripartite collaboration of the WHO, FAO, WOAH, and UNEP. It involves coordination between the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD). The mission is designed to strengthen integrated surveillance against threats like Zoonotic diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Recently, a governance model framework for State/Union Territories was released in December 2025 (as per search results), indicating a move to institutionalize the framework at the state level.