The Centre has approved a Rs. 382.41 crore
proposal of the Union health ministry for the up-gradation of the
National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). The proposal is part of a
new initiative for its improvement of infrastructure, modernization of
equipments and augmenting manpower. The Centre is previously known as
the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).

According
to sources, the cabinet committee on economic affairs has approved the
proposal of the health ministry for the up-gradation of the NCDC, Delhi
at an estimated cost of Rs. 382.41 crore
which will help the NCDC in providing the enhanced quality services in
their current activities. In addition, it will play a more meaningful
role in the development of public health policy framework, conducting
risk factor surveys for non-communicable diseases and developing human
resource in public health.

The up-gradation work is expected to
be completed by April, 2013. It envisages improvement of infrastructure,
installation of state-of-art equipment, creation of new divisions and
upscaling of existing ones.

With the upgraded diagnostic
facilities and enhanced public health capabilities, the NCDC will be in a
much better position to investigate disease outbreaks and respond
adequately to public health emergencies of international concern. The
up-gradation of NCDC shall enhance referral diagnostics support services
for disease outbreaks investigations, networking of public health
laboratories, data management capacity, trained manpower and quality
operational research. The upgraded Institute will also provide public
health leadership in disease surveillance, rapid response to epidemics
and discovery and characterization of newer pathogens.
The
up-gradation of the institute is significant in view of the increasing
population and new diseases have made up-gradation of the institute a
very important step as the epidemic intelligence services is the need of
hour and time has come to upgrade the premier institutions like NICD.
The country faces a peculiar dilemma of having to combat triple burden
of the diseases. While there is an unfinished agenda of dealing
effectively with common communicable diseases such as malaria,
tuberculosis etc. there remains increasing problem of emerging
infectious diseases. Over two dozen new disease causing agents have
emerged in the preceding three decades. NCDC provides technical
expertise and trained manpower for tackling challenges like H1N1.