New Approaches to Disease Surveillance and Early Outbreak Detection in India (original) (raw)
The administrative responsibility for disease surveillance in India is shared between the central government and the respective state governments. While the central government is responsible for the central health programs the state government is in charge of the municipality based disease surveillance. This leads to a high variability in the comprehensiveness and efficacy of the surveillance systems. Though the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) has tried to overcome some of these problems very much still depends on regional initiatives. Two examples of new approaches to disease surveillance that both include GIS components will be presented and discussed. The leading emergency medical service provider in India, GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute, routinely collects electronic information on each medical emergency case in its dispatch centres. A pilot study assessed the potential of this data source for syndromic surveillance of infectious diseases in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Based on a context and stakeholder analysis the framework conditions for syndromic surveillance in India were explored and a pilot system was developed. Pune was one of the cities in India most affected during the H1N1 pandemic 2009. Though early outbreak detection is still weak at municipal level in India, the Pune Municipal Corporation established a systematic health screening and hospital based disease surveillance system for H1N1. Using also concepts of health geography spatial and statistical analyses were conducted. The experiences from Pune and Andhra Pradesh proved that surveillance systems can be established and maintained even in countries where in general the health data quality and monitoring is still in a state of development.
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The administrative responsibility for disease surveillance in India is shared between the central government and the respective state governments. While the central government is responsible for the central health programs the state governments are in charge of the municipality based disease surveillance. This leads to a high variability in the comprehensiveness and efficacy of the surveillance systems. Though the Integrated Disease Surveillance project (IDSP) has tried to overcome some of these problems very much still depends on regional initiatives. Two examples of new approaches to disease surveillance that both include gis components will be presented and discussed. The leading emergency medical service provider in India, gvK Emergency management and Research Institute, routinely collects electronic information on each medical emergency case in its dispatch centres. A pilot study assessed the potential of this data source for syndromic surveillance of infectious diseases in the state of Andhra pradesh. Based on a context and stakeholder analysis the framework conditions for syndromic surveillance in India were explored and a pilot system was developed. pune was one of the cities in India most affected during the H1N1 pandemic 2009. Though early outbreak detection is still weak at municipal level in India, the pune municipal Corporation established a systematic health screening and hospital based disease surveillance system for H1N1. Using also concepts of health geography spatial and statistical analyses were conducted. The experiences from pune and Andhra pradesh indicate that surveillance systems can be established and maintained even in countries where in general the health data quality and monitoring is still in a state of development.
This short note proposes a national Geographic Information System (GIS) - based health infrastructure to deal with epidemics and pandemics. Currently, there is no pan-India health infrastructure available that can compile, update, and report the spread of epidemic diseases. It not only curtails the opportunity of finding the real-time data on the spatial distribution of a disease but prevents one to inquire into the causes of the disease through epidemiological analysis. The proposed infrastructure in this study is a pan-India one and can broadly be divided into two parts, hotspot mapping and accessibility to services. In the first part, hospitals are proposed to act as nodes of data collection, sending data to a national GIS portal. This portal shall have the capabilities of plotting the data using map rendering services such as Google and Bing Maps. This way, hotspots can be visualized in no time, benefitting the government and common citizenry alike. The second part deals with th...
Infectious disease surveillance, timely detection and early warning of outbreaks present a complex challenge to health authorities in India. Approaches based on the use of unexplored data sources, like emergency medical services (EMS) data, can contribute to the further advancement of public health surveillance capacities in India and support and strengthen the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) strategy. This research followed a mixed method approach including a series of semi-structured interviews and fever data analysis of the EMS operating dispatch system in Andra Pradesh, India. In this paper, we explore whether routinely collected EMS health data can improve sustainable infectious disease surveillance and early warning capacity. The result highlights the need for improved surveillance systems for early warning of infectious diseases in India. The data availability at the EMS dispatch centre includes patient data and spatial information and can be used for near real-time analysis. Routine data relevant for health surveillance can be extracted to provide timely health information that supplements and enhances more traditional surveillance mechanisms and thus provides a cost-efficient, near real-time early warning system for the operating states. The designed intervention is sustainable and can improve infectious disease surveillance to potentially help the government officials to appropriately prioritize timely interventions to prevent infectious disease spread.
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