Why in news?
- The taxpayer’s money is spent on surveillance and routine disease data collection activities in India.
- The data regarding disease prevention is so poor in the country and there is lack of information about the Zika virus.
What is the issue?
- The municipal authorities in Ahmedabad were unaware of the activities of Zika virus.
- This fact itself smacks of either a very poor understanding of disease control principles, or, more likely, an uncoordinated, under-staffed and dysfunctional system.
- Public resources were used for establishing the surveillance system, Thousands of samples were collected, screened and then sent for confirmatory testing, all of which costs money.
- The purpose of this expenditure was and is to provide timely information to local agencies, so that they can implement mosquito-control measures and stop Zika virus transmissions.
- But the data is not being utilised timely, this reflects a waste of surveillance activities and the public resources invested in setting these up.
What are the complaints about Disease surveillance?
- It is also the right of the public across the country to know what happened after the cases were identified.
- Buy no such information provided to the stake holders.
- No special care is taken for pregnant women.
- No reports were prepared in order to check if there were additional cases in the area
- No epidemiological protocols were available to support laboratory surveillance
- Withholding information in order to prevent the population from panicking goes against the cardinal rule of public health.
- The taxpayer’s money routinely goes to fund data collection for major diseases in the country.
- There are multiple disease control programmes and collecting data is a major activity, sometimes requiring heroic inputs from grassroots-level workers.
- Incomplete or poorly collected data is even more damaging as it can give wrong information for health planning activities.
What is the way forward?
- Data collection uses taxpayers’ money, and when the data is not used for improving people’s health, this is a waste of public funds.
- It is not easy to track a virus in a billion-plus population but not acting after obtaining information is a criminal waste of resources.
- Poor health communication and its disastrous consequences amongst the public, having a catastrophic impact on the country’s economy.
- A review of disease surveillance systems is required, not only to make this entire system relevant, but also to appreciate the hard work of data collection which is done by lower-level functionaries.
- The goal is not to haphazardly collect data, but to use this data for protecting the health of the population.
- Government stewardship of this whole system is essential, to listen, regulate and bring about a cohesive health service that can provide care to the people.
- India has enough technical resources and expertise.
- The critical role of the government in demonstrating leadership and guiding disharmonious participants is essential.
Source: Indian Express
