THE MODEL: Union Minister of Health Anbumani Ramadoss at the inauguration of the new building of the ICMR School of Public Health at Ambattur on Monday. Prof. N.K. Ganguly, Director-General, ICMR (extreme left) and Prof.M.D. Gupte, Director, NIE (se cond from left), are also in the picture. — Photo: K. Pichumani

CHENNAI: The national disease surveillance system in the country is outdated and hence ineffective, and should have been replaced 30 years ago, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss said on Monday.

He was addressing the inaugural function of the new buildings of the Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) School of Public Health at Ambattur.

Referring to the spurt in communicable diseases like dengue and chikungunya and the consequent disease burden, Dr. Anbumani said the fault lay with the flawed disease surveillance system. There was no system of collating data on communicable diseases such as cholera, malaria and acute diarrhoea from all over the country.

However, the situation was set to change with the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project that will, in two years' time, be in force all over the country.

Surveillance units will be set up in each district with branches at the block level (one for every 5,000 people). These centres will collect data and send it to a central facility, thus enabling the government to be prepared for averting epidemic-like situations.

Experts from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, would also be involved in the process of actualising the new disease surveillance programme.

Dr. Anbumani said the ICMR would be promoted as a different medical research department under the Ministry of Health.

The public health school would train field epidemiologists who would be absorbed into the National Rural Health Mission.

ICMR director-general N.K. Ganguly said each school would enter into an agreement with an international institute of repute. Scholarships would be provided for students.

The focus of the Chennai school would be on environmental public health.

Union Minister of State for Health Panabaka Lakshmi said the main constraint in improving the health status and quality of life of people was shortage of trained manpower.

It was for removing this block that the NIE-ICMR had launched the field-level epidemiology training programme.

M.D. Gupte, director, NIE; David T. Hopper, U.S. Consul General in Chennai; C. Kuppusami, M.P.; B. Ranganathan, MLA; Gerald Keusch, Associate Dean, Boston University; Mitchell Weiss, Professor and head, department of public health and epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Switzerland; were among those who spoke.

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