Kerala - Kochi   

Call for improving disease surveillance

Staff Reporter

Private hospitals told to cooperate

P.K. Sreemathy

KOCHI: Private hospitals in the State have been asked to cooperate with the State Government in disease surveillance and providing timely medical care in places where Government health services are not able to do so, Minister for Health P.K. Sreemathy said here on Tuesday.

At a State-level meeting called by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board here on managing biomedical waste generated in hospitals, she sought support from the private institutions for providing better medical care and data input on diseases.

A format for this cooperation would be developed at a meeting to be convened soon.

The Minister said that since the private hospitals got 65 per cent of the patients, it was only with their cooperation that the Government could develop a disease-surveillance system. These hospitals could not shrug off their responsibility in improving healthcare. All hospitals in the district needed to report communicable diseases and cases of HIV/AIDS and cancer to the District Medical Officer. Modern technology made this easy.

She said the Government lacked a database reflecting all kinds of diseases because only primary and community health centres and taluk hospitals provided data. Data inflow from private hospitals at the end of every month should become routine.

Health Secretary Vishwas Mehta said that by 2021, older people would outnumber the young in the State. The meeting was the first in bringing private and Government health services on a platform to address biomedical waste disposal.

Representatives of nearly 200 hospitals having 100 beds or more in the State partici- pated.

G. Rajmohan, Chairman of the Board, welcomed the gathering.

T.K. Kuttamani, Director, Health Service; Meenu Hariharan, Director, Medical Education, and Dinesh Arora, Director, State Rural Health Mission, participated.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Protests become louder in west Kochi
Ward-level panels to tackle diseases
Vallarpadam terminal: DP World submits project proposals to CPT
Work of five artists on display
Call for improving disease surveillance
Port officials seek police help
A doctor is a workman, says High Court
Thattekkad hero to be nominated for bravery award
CBI team questioning Surya Rao
Hartal held at Ilanji
No end in sight to traffic woes
Navodaya in new form
Notable work
Nurturing the blooms
Around the City
In Kochi Today

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu