The State’s Vision document on “Advancing People’s Health in Karnataka” that was released on Wednesday has recommended building strong and decentralised health systems to address communicable diseases and associated deaths across the State. This can be done through effective prevention, screening, diagnosis, and case finding apart from notification and early management, stated the document.
The comprehensive document has been prepared by the Karnataka Health Vision Group comprising 250 health experts. “The State should constitute a separate district committee and set up an action plan to strengthen health systems functioning with micro-planning through motivated human resources, improved health care service delivery, strengthening public health laboratories, extensive behavioural change communication activities, and integrated IT solutions to control infectious and communicable diseases in its last-mile journey,” the Vision Group has recommended.
Former director of NIMHANS G. Gururaj, who heads the Vision Group, told The Hindu on Thursday that the success achieved and progress made in communicable disease control should be sustained and strengthened to complete the last-mile journey for achieving desired goals.
“The Vision Group recommends building strong decentralised programs at the district and taluk levels, strengthening health infrastructure for service delivery, continuing research in communicable disease control, and establishing multisectoral coordination and collaboration along with monitoring and surveillance as the pillars for effective control of communicable diseases,” he said.
Lessons from COVID
Pointing out that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught many lessons, Dr. Gururaj said: “The limited capacity to address the existing and future health challenges calls for strengthening and reforming our health systems amidst regional disparities and unpreparedness to achieve better results.”
K. Ravi Kumar, public health adviser who heads the Vision Group’s committee on ‘Communicable and Infectious Diseases Control’, said the focus should be on effective prevention, screening, diagnosis, case finding, notification, and early management especially in districts and taluks which are considered as difficult and hard to reach and with poor performance.
“In the long run, genotypic research needs to be strengthened along with norms and standards for regular monitoring of the programme. The district-level committees should be actively involved in planning several activities required for effective disease prevention and control,” he said.
“The last-mile journey in prevention/elimination has to be driven by good quality data using GIS software to focus on high geographic locations for area specific control measures for individual diseases. Capacity strengthening of State and district officers, along with engagement of Junior Health Assistant (Male Multipurpose Health Worker) with supervision and monitoring of his work at the village level is crucial,” Dr. Kumar pointed out.
