The union health ministry would launch the Rs 408-crore Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) in October, 2004 and the first phase of the project will cover 206 districts in eight states.
IDS Project, the five-year nationwide disease surveillance project in three phases, aims to improve infrastructure in meeting outbreak of communicable and non-communicable diseases by way of capacity building to track diseases, upgrading infrastructure in district government hospitals, creation of surveillance teams, improving infrastructure at laboratories attached to district hospitals etc.
The IDSP will monitor outbreak of communicable diseases like malaria, acute diarrhoeal diseases, typhoid, tuberculosis, measles, polio, plague and non-communicable diseases (including road traffic accidents), unusual clinical syndromes, sentinel surveillance of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis A & B. While 75 percent of the funds would be from the World Bank, the union health ministry would contribute the rest, said Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare in Chennai while announcing the project, this week.
The first phase covers the states of Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and two northeastern states. The second phase, starting next year, will cover 176 districts in 12 states. The rest of the total 602 districts and the union territories will be covered in the last phase during 2006-'07.
Data management and advanced IT communication will be a main feature of the project. Each district will have a select team of trained surveillance personnel to monitor and collect date on the diseases, which will be passed on to the official authorities in the state and central level. For faster communication, all the laboratories attached to district hospitals will be computerized with data transfer facilities. In order to ensure the programme reaches village grass root level, village level health registers will be created with the help of 12 lakh auxiliary workers employed under the project. Further, the IDSP would integrate with all other various ongoing disease surveillance projects, including surveillance of HIV/AIDS, informed the union health minister.
He also said the government would launch the second phase of the revamped National Programme for Blindness Control within a month. The revamped programme will include cataract, glaucoma and diabetes induced eye problems. The project targets 2.11-crore cataract operations in five years, of which more than 80 percent will be intra ocular implants. Of the Rs.445 crore earmarked for the programme, Rs.248 crore will be given to states as recurring assistance. The programme targets to bring down the incidence of blindness in the country to 0.3 percent within 2010, informed the minister.