The Centre will soon launch a Rs 350 crore Integrated Disease Surveillance Project to bring 11 disease parameters under strict vigilance throughout the country.
Union Health minister Ambumani Ramadoss told reporters here today that the World Bank-funded project would be able to create a veritable data base for 11 incidences like HIV/AIDS, polio, cholera, cardio-vascular diseases and even road accidents.'This will be a network of surveillance professionals through the prinmary health centres where even a single case of any of these diseases breaking out will be notified within five hours,' he said on the sidelines of the inauguration of a Diarrhoeal Disease Research and Control Centre.
Ramadoss said the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in New Delhi would be expanded on the pattern of a premier disease control institute of Atlanta and renamed National Centre for Disease Control to back the project.
'We will be putting in a lot of money. We are banking on this project in a big way,' he said.
Ramadoss said diarrhoeal diseases, the second biggest killer after respiratory diseases, claimed 0.7 million children's lives annually in the country.
'We have switched gears from the curative mode of health care to the preventive mode. We want some very viable vaccines for all communicable diseases to be given to children,'he said.
(Source:PTI News)
