The Tamil Nadu health ministry and the Chennai Corporation will be setting up 'Disease Surveillance Health Society' to collect information on disease outbreaks, study trends of prevalence and educate the people on public health. The body would be registered with the District Registrar of Societies, said Dr Krishna, health officer of the Corporation.

The Mayor of the Corporation would hold the post of honorary chairperson of the disease surveillance committee and the Commissioner would act as its chairperson. The Corporation's health officer would be the secretary. The proposal for the new project has been approved by the Corporation council last Saturday.

Dr Krishna told Pharmabiz that the society would be established at a cost of Rs 86 lakh, of which Rs 15 lakh would be used to set up a geographic information system (GIS) in disease incidence and prevalence.

For the smooth running of the program around 500 doctors, 1500 health workers and 200 laboratory technicians would be trained in surveillance and a private agency would be identified to collect data from major private hospitals for inclusion in the database.

"This means that a click of the computer mouse could yield information on disease patterns in the city", he said.

Committee members would include the Corporation's joint commissioner for health, additional health officers, director of the communicable diseases hospital, professors of Microbiology at the government medical college and Kilpauk medical college, director of the Institute of child health and representatives from the Indian Council for Child welfare, Indian Medical Association and Chennai Metro water.

Both ruling and opposition party leaders of the corporation council and the head of the standing committee for health would also serve as members, the health officer pointed out.