With the country witnessing outbreaks of diseases every week, the Centre is planning to strengthen the ongoing  Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) by establishing a network of 500 district public health labs and linking them to 200 medical colleges and referral labs.

This is aimed at improving the quality of data and outbreak investigations which are key to checking the diseases. A total of Rs. 851.81 crore is being sought for this purpose during the next five years, sources said.

IDSP was launched with World Bank assistance in November 2004. The project has been extended for two years up to March 2012 but the World Bank is funding Central Surveillance Unit (CSU) at NCDC & 9 identified states and the rest 26 states/UTs are being funded from domestic budget.

Further World Bank assistance will not be available after March 2012 and the programme will need to be implemented with domestic budget. Under the project, surveillance units have been established at all state and district headquarters and training of state/district surveillance teams has been completed for 34 states/UTs and partially completed for Uttar Pradesh.

Presently, 85 per cent districts in the country report weekly surveillance data through e-mail and more than 67 per cent districts report through portal. The weekly data gives information on the disease trends and seasonality of diseases.

On an average, 20 outbreaks are reported every week by the states to CSU. A total of 553 outbreaks were reported and responded to by states in 2008, 799 outbreaks in 2009 and 990 outbreaks in 2010. In 2011, 538 outbreaks have been reported till June. Earlier, only a few outbreaks were reported in the country by the States/UTs.

“All activities being undertaken presently under IDSP are proposed to continue in the 12th Plan as Disease Surveillance and Response Programme under NCDC as a Central Sector Scheme. Central Surveillance Unit will be merged into “Centre for Integrated Disease Surveillance.” All support to states/districts health societies including additional contractual staff given under IDSP will continue,” according to an official in the health ministry.