A proposal in the State Health Policy to carve out a separate directorate for public health, which could have helped the government effectively tackle infectious diseases such as COVID-19, is still gathering dust. There is no move to merge health workers and officials in departments such as food safety and pollution control under one umbrella to rein in future challenges in public health too, say experts.
A senior health official told The Hindu that the plan was to have the directorate of public health to handle works related to prevention and control of diseases as well as immunisation campaigns and a directorate of clinical services to cover the functioning of hospitals. The Directorate of Medical Education would continue to cover medical education and colleges. These would be under the Director-General Health (Modern Medicine). Though the State Cabinet had approved the policy in January 2019, the directorate was yet to be formed.
The government recently brought out five sections within the Department of Local Self-Government under one service and also formed a ‘public health and environment wing’ as part of it. However, public health professionals in panchayats such as health inspectors, who are attached to the Directorate of Health Services and perform ground-level duties such as disease control and awareness sessions, were not included within its ambit.
As per the 2011 Census, over 50% of the State’s population live in grama panchayat limits. Municipalities and city corporations have their own health wing though their work is mostly related to overseeing issuance of licences, sanitation, and inspections.
A senior community medicine expert from the Government Medical College, Manjeri, pointed out that merging the public health staff under the Directorate of Health Services, those under municipalities and city corporations, and the staff attached to the Department of Food Safety and pollution control boards to form a unified public health cadre would help streamline the work right now done by different sections.
“The public health cadre should focus on environmental health, waste management, pollution control, food safety, recycling, water quality management, lifestyle disease control, and enforcement of health laws,” he said. He also pointed out that one of the pay revision commissions had earlier highlighted the underutilisation of skills of trained health inspectors and recommended to the government to effectively use their services to improve public health.
