| The country which aspires to be a global power seems to be at the mercy of mosquitoes. As many as 4,500 dengue cases have been reported in 11 states, while 13 lakh cases of chikungunya have been reported in 10 states. And with the onset of winter, Japanese encephalitis is all set to strike.
|
| |
| Public health experts blame these outbreaks on a poor surveillance system and a neglected public health system that is short of trained health inspectors to ensure the link between hygiene and health.
|
| |
| Faced with the epidemics, Union Health Minister A Ramadoss announced a Rs 400-crore satellite linked disease surveillance programme last month, reviving a three-year-old proposal. He also admitted that the existing system was not active any more.
|
| |
| N K Sethi, health advisor in the Planning Commission, said, “The outbreaks do underline the need to revive public health machinery in the country and to energise it.” He sees promise in the Rs 9,500-crore National Rural Health Mission which would include many vertical disease control programmes, like the National Vector Borne Diseases Control Programme, under it.
|
| |
| “There will be block-level action plans for clean surroundings and this should help to some extent,” he said.
|
| |
| However, what exists now is a vastly neglected public health machinery. Dr K R Nair, head of the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said, “The government has only partially implemented the recommendations of the Bhore Committee of 1950 which had suggested a framework to merge preventive and curative medicine. We set up a network of primary heath centres, the largest in the world. But we left out the recommended preventive machinery.”
|
| |
| He is critical of the NRHM which he says lacks the vision that can provide a holistic solution.
|
| |
| The Bhore committee had recommended creation of a “new class of worker known as Health Assistant with simplified medical training to take care of medical statistics, water purification, and the ‘spray killing of mosquitoes’.”
|
| |
| According to former director of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases Dr K K Dutta, shrinking funds for communicable diseases, non-stewardship by health ministry in matters of hygiene and zero urban focus are the three main reasons for the spiralling rate of vector borne diseases in the country.
|
| |
| But World Health Organisation coordinator for Communicable Disease Surveillance Dr Sampath K Krishnan gives a clean chit to the government.
|
| |
| “The present number of cases is well within the actual expected number... However, community participation is wanting,” he said. |
| |
|
| |
Content Guide
