Infectious Disease Institute in Rajasthan to Ease Burden of Health Authorities

A task force has been constituted to prevent any major outbreak of swine flu in future and to monitor the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) developments in Rajasthan, India. The task force has also expressed the need for an Infectious Disease Institute to reduce the burden on health authorities.// Dr. Panagariya said, "The health department remains busy for almost eight months in a year controlling malaria, dengue, scrub typhus, chikungunya and swine flu. The authorities can’t focus on other health indicators."

He added that there should be an institute in the state to provide training in critical care programs and run courses in infectious diseases and critical care medicines.

The report prepared by the task force quoted, "There is a critical need to strengthen the basic public health systems including primary healthcare facilities, laboratory surveillance systems and critical care facilities. The existing infectious disease surveillance system, named as IDSP, is way below the expectations."

It emphasises the needs to be restructured and overhauled so as to connect the sub-centres, Public health centres, secondary care centres and tertiary care centres which will help in early detection of the outbreak.

Source-Medindia