Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Action plan for epidemic prevention launched

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Health Department has launched a comprehensive, year-long action plan for pre-epidemic preparedness as well as prevention and management of infectious diseases, to be implemented by the local bodies.

Addressing a meeting of chairpersons of health standing committees of local bodies here on Monday, Health Minister P.K. Sreemathy said that it would be the responsibility of the local bodies to ensure that the action plan is implemented and monitored properly.

Ms. Sreemathy pointed out that the State had not been doing enough to improve public health in the past two decades, which had resulted in the resurgence of old and the emergence of new infectious diseases. She said that the Health Department’s health field staff, who number around 20,000, have not been very efficient in the field in the past few years. They have not been able to check the outbreaks of vector-borne diseases. Also, environmental sanitation has been slack.

Ms. Sreemathy added that this year, Accredited Social Health Workers (ASHAs) or women health workers under the National Rural Health Mission who make house visits, will join the Health field staff in public health activities such as vector-control and surveillance and reporting of fever cases.

Ward-level health sanitation committees will be allotted Rs. 10,000 each .

The crux of the action plan will be fever surveillance and monitoring as well as integrated vector management programme, which would be implemented in three phases — the inter-epidemic period (January-March), the pre-epidemic period (April-June) and the peak epidemic period (July-December).

The department has charted out a clear time-line for various pre-epidemic measures such as vector control and sanitation activities.

Accordingly, all district diseases control and monitoring committees should meet before January end and chalk out the activities to be undertaken by all sanitation committees from district till ward-levels.

Training programmes for health workers and volunteers should be completed by March first week. Intensive source detection, destruction as well as vector indices studies should be completed between March 5 and May 30 and these should be intensified during the monsoon.

Local bodies have been asked to complete sanitation and cleanliness activities before February 15.

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