We have partnered more than once with the Humane Society International (HSI), India, to take forward our work in the area of Animal Welfare.
Bringing 21st Science to India: Finding Alternatives to Animal Experiments
The ongoing grant supports the Indian scientists to contribute to AOP Wiki, a wiki-based crowdsourcing platform from the OECD AOP programme that promotes the use of Adverse Outcome Pathways to develop integrated approaches to testing and development.
The specific objectives of the initiative are as follows.
- Fund scholarly reviews of human disease research by independent experts for optimising the funding and use of advanced, human-specific tools and approaches, in collaboration with the country’s top research funding agencies
- Fund the addition of new AOPs by Indian researchers to the global knowledge base managed by the OECD
- Organise an Indian regulatory/biomedical science workshop to disseminate the findings of the research with health scientists, officials representing Indian institutions, national regulatory and research agencies, science-funding organisations, and other stakeholders, to discuss these issues
- Submit and present the research and conference findings to the Government of India to enable funding into investment and funding of alternate methods to animal use
Model for sustainable human-snake conflict management and mitigation
Our first grant to HSI, in 2008, supported the development of Hunsur block in Mysore district of Karnataka, as a model taluk for snakebite prevention and management leading to zero snakebite deaths in the region in next six to eight years.
Specifically, the work
- Generated awareness among the general population on snakebite prevention, conflict management and bite management
- Identified villages which are the hotspots of snake-human conflict and distributed flashlights for snakebite prevention
- Trained government doctors in the block on snakebite treatment protocol
- Trained paramedics and ambulance staff in administering first-aid for snake bite
HSI collaborated with the Gerry Martin Project on this programme.