Govt to Shift its Focus From Curative to Preventive Mode of Healthcare

The government is shifting its focus from the curative mode of healthcare to the preventive one, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss said here Friday .

'Children will be administered all viable vaccines, including those for Hepatitis B and Japanese Encephalitis. We are switching over to the preventive mode of medicare,' Ramadoss said after dedicating the Diarrhoeal Disease Research and Control Centre to the nation.

He said diarrhoeal diseases claim 0.7 million lives of children every year, thus emerging as the second largest killer in the country after respiratory diseases.

The new centre has come up in collaboration with the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The Japanese government has extended a grant-in-aid of Rs.920 million for the its construction.

Ramadoss said the centre would soon launch an Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) to bring a few diseases under the surveillance programme.

'Eleven parameters have been fixed for the purpose. Incidence of polio, HIV/AIDS, cholera, cardiovascular diseases and even road accidents will be brought under its purview,' he said.

'Within five hours of outbreak of any disease it will be notified and action will be taken immediately. All the districts of the country will be connected through satellite links for better surveillance. The total project cost is estimated at Rs.3.5 billion,' he said.

To supplement the IDSP, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases would be expanded and renamed as National Centre for Disease Control, the minister said.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will soon be made a separate department in the health ministry, which will be re-christened as ministry of health & family welfare and medical research, he said.

Talking on the sidelines of the programme, Ramadoss said that under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) medical facilities in two blocks in every district will be upgraded and medical mobile vans will be provided.

He said the cabinet had recently cleared a Rs.1.2 billion project for setting up six new referral and research institutes, one of which will be based in Kolkata. Moreover, a Rs.45 billion project will be taken up for expansion of 11 more institutes, he said.

(Source: IANS News)