Surveillance to tackle chikungunya, dengue soon

New Delhi, Oct 11: The government is planning to put an Integrated Disease Surveillance project in the country which would predict outbreak of diseases like chikungunya and dengue thereby helping in preventing and containing them, Health Minister Anbumoni Ramadoss said today.

Briefing media after a meeting of health ministers of Chikungunya affected states, Dr Ramadoss said that the Integrated Disease Surviellance Project costing about Rs 400 crore is being implemented with the support of World Bank and World Health Organisation. The network would be in place by the end of next year after which prediction and prevention of disease outbreak would be easier.

Replying to a query, Dr Ramadoss admitted that the older disesase surveillance system was not functioning well. He said that states also have their own surveillance system but some of them function well while others not. The new system would also be augumented and suggestions from CDC, Atlanta is being taken.

About 13,26,000 suspected chikungunya cases have been reported this year in 165 districts of ten states and of them 13,900 blood samples were tested and 1602 have been confirmed as chikungunya positive. In Delhi, 125 suspected cases of chikungunya were tested of which 21 have been reported positive, he said.

However, Dr Ramadoss denied any deaths attributed due to Chikungunya as being due to it. Reiterating that Chikungunya was a non-fatal disease, the health minister, who visited Chikungunya affected districts of Kerala, said that even the experts from WHO and NICD who visited have found by verbal autoposy that most of the deaths attributed to chikungunya were actually in elderly peple who already suffered from some inbuilt complications and had history of TB, cancer and cardiac problems.

''When we are admitting dengue deaths, why would we deny any chikungunya deaths? Let WHO say that chikungunya is fatal, then we will also accept,'' Dr Ramadoss said, when asked that in Kerala over 100 deaths have been reported due to chikungunya. About the report of the experts who visited Kerala, he said they would submit their report by tomorrow.

He said that the centre has assured all possible help to chikungunya-affected Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi. The meeting discussed the strategies that have been going on to be adopted in future to deal with the disease which has come to India after a gap of 32 years. They tried to learn from the experiences of each other and sought central support which the health ministry said that it would provide.

Since the vector for both dengue and chikungunya were same type of mosquito, the states also discussed the issue of dengue. The Centre has provided about Rs 20 crore worth of fogging machines, larvicide, DDT, diagnostic kits, awareness material and would augument their supplies as per the demands of the states.

UNI

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