One World South Asia (OWSA), an international civil society network online, has called for increased government role in turning integrated disease surveillance and preventive healthcare a success in the South Asian region. An effective linkage between government and civil society networks making appropriate use of ICT tools is the need of the hour, the just concluded 5th Annual General Meeting of OWSA noted.

The OWSA suggestion turns more relevant in the Indian context, where the Central Government has recently announced a National Disease Surveillance Programme by making use of a country-wide e-linkage. While the government plans are to e-connect all 600 district disease surveillance centers of the country with the apex centre, OWSA prefers the linkage to go up to the village level in order to make it faster, fool proof and effective.

The international workshop on healthcare and ICT, part of the OWSA AGM held at Agra on January 23rd and 24th recommended an integrated (holistic) approach using sustainable ICT tools for faster and effective healthcare delivery across the region. It called for knowledge-based advocacy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of the global community, which includes combating diseases like HIV / AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis etc.

The thematic areas covered under the workshop included use of appropriate information and communication tools in combating epidemics, in countering malnutrition and ensuring maternal healthcare, disease surveillance and national wide health management system as well as ICTs role in primary health service and health service delivery.

Absence of current statistics on any of these problems was one of the major concerns expressed. The conference attended by government officials, researchers, hospital administrators, grass root health NGOs, healthcare media professionals, etc. called for proper use of ICTs in tackling the situation. Ensuring the credibility of the primary data was another concern. The recommendations included the setting up of an expert committee for cross verification of the data that could be generated using various ICT tools. The OWSA feels that its 700 plus network partners (grass root NGOs) can play a pivotal role as facilitator to bridge the gap between the official mechanism and the community. A multi-stake holder partner model for developing and sourcing content as well as disseminating them was suggested.

According to OWSA, ICTs can create an enabling environment and support structure in terms of access to information, education campaigns, quality health information, optimisation of resources, database management, co-ordination and networking sustainable multi stake holder partnerships, capacity building, advocacy, monitoring and evaluation of projects, research, creating access and facilitating service delivery and also supporting help lines.

The multi-stake holders identified by OWSA in tackling the health challenges of the region include governments, medical education providers and regulators, pharmaceutical industry (manufacturers, traders, chemists and regulators), health facilitators (doctors, para-medical staff and health workers), hospitals (public and private), and NGOs. The delegates from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India participated in the programme.