Karnataka government’s department of health and family welfare has announced the setting up of a dedicated Committee on Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme to formulate guidelines to report the fatal cases caused due to communicable diseases in the private hospitals. These include H1N1, malaria and dengue among others.

Further, Karnataka has also set up 14 surveillance centres across the state to conduct the blood tests and keep tab on the epidemics. The state government has now instructed all hospitals to refer all samples to these 14 centres.

The Integrated Diseases Surveillance Programme committee headed by Dr. Usha Vasunkar will identity more test labs in private hospitals. Presently, the blood samples are sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune or the Public Health Institute. “Since this is grossly inadequate going by the virulent spread of the diseases, we need to work on a war footing to control the current situation”, stated EV Ramana Reddy, principal secretary, department of health and family welfare government of Karnataka.

According to the Central health ministry's guidelines, dengue could be confirmed only after an Elisa test which was not been done at the private hospitals, he added.

Both National Institute of Virology and Public Health Institute have been receiving around 20-22 samples a day.

Other members of the Committee for the Integrated Diseases Surveillance Programme are Dr V Ravi, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Dr Prasanna, director National Institute of Virology, Dr. Shashidar Buggi, head, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases, Dr P Anbazhagan, regional director of health, World Health Organization.

Currently Karnataka has reported 888 cases of dengue, 695 patients suffering from chikunguya and 864 H1N1 influenza cases which were recorded between January to July end 2010. The total number of fatal cases for all these is estimated at 62. H1N1 has reported the highest deaths so far among the communicable diseases.

According to the Karnataka minister for health B. Sriramulu, a toll free helpline number would be soon introduced and all queries related to the epidemics will be addressed. Under the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, doctors of both government and private hospitals will need to suggest measures. “This would help to reduce the gap between the government and private hospitals. The effort would also help to frame the guidelines for private hospitals to report dengue deaths caused by mosquitoes. It can also decide on the kind of kits to be used for dengue diagnosis,” he said.