scholarly journals VISION 2035 PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCE IN INDIA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Blanchard ◽  
Reynold Washington ◽  
Marissa Becker ◽  
N Vasanthakumar ◽  
K Madan Gopal ◽  
...  

NITI Aayog’s mandate is to provide strategic directions to the various sectors of the Indian economy. In line with this mandate, the Health Vertical released a set of four working papers compiled in a volume entitled ‘Health Systems for New India: Building Blocks – Potential Pathways to Reform’ during November 2019. “India’s Public Health Surveillance by 2035” is a continuation of the work on Health Systems Strengthening. It contributes by suggesting mainstreaming of surveillance by making individual electronic health records the basis for surveillance.Public Health Surveillance (PHS) cuts across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of care. Surveillance is an important Public Health function. It is an essential action for disease detection, prevention, and control. Surveillance is ‘Information for Action’. This paper is a joint effort of the Health vertical, NITI Aayog, and the Institute for Global Public Health, University of Manitoba, Canada, with contributions from technical experts from the Government of India, States, and International agencies. In 2035, • India’s Public Health Surveillance will be a predictive, responsive, integrated, and tiered system of disease and health surveillance that is inclusive of Prioritised, emerging, and re-emerging communicable and non-communicable diseases and conditions. • Surveillance will be primarily based on de-identified (anonymised) individual-level patient information that emanates from health care facilities, laboratories, and other sources. • Public Health Surveillance will be governed by an adequately resourced effective administrative and technical structure and will ensure that it serves the public good. • India will provide regional and global leadership in managing events that constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Multiple disease outbreaks have prompted India to proactively respond with prevention and control measures. These actions are based on information from public health surveillance. India was able to achieve many successes in the past. Smallpox was eradicated and polio was eliminated. India has been able to reduce HIV incidence and deaths and advance and accelerate TB elimination efforts. Many outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, acute encephalitis syndromes, acute febrile illnesses, diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases have been promptly detected, identified and managed. These successes are a result of effective community-based, facility-based, and health system-based surveillance. The program response involved multiple sectors, including public and private health care systems and civil society.

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siphiwe M Shongwe-Gama ◽  
Dr. Thulani Maphosa ◽  
Phinda Khumalo ◽  
Vusie Lokotfwako ◽  
Nhlanhla Nhlabatsi ◽  
...  

Objective: To strengthen public health surveillance and monitor implementation of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in the Kingdom of Swaziland.Introduction: Swaziland adopted the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy in 2010 to strengthen Public Health Surveillance (PHS) that fulfills International Health Regulations (2005) and the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). This strategy allows the Ministry of Health (MoH), Epidemiology and Disease Control Unit (EDCU) to monitor, prevent and control priority diseases in the country. We used a health systems strengthening approach to pilot an intervention model for IDSR implementation at five hospitals in Swaziland over a pilot phase of three months.Methods: Our intervention included cross-country IDSR trainings, sensitizations and onsite trainings targeting national and regional health teams for over 250 health workers. The EDCU developed and disseminated standardized case definitions for health facilities (HFs) to detect, confirm and report priority conditions. Trained health care workers were tasked to cascade knowledge sharing and sensitization about IDSR with their HFs during in-service trainings. The facilities were to use IDSR standard case definition as guidelines for diagnosing and reporting cases; submit monthly reports on all priority conditions to Health Management Information System (HMIS) and intensify reporting through immediate disease notification system (IDNS) for all notifiable conditions. Indicators and monitoring tools for disease surveillance and response as recommended by the technical guidelines for IDSR in the African region were developed. The intervention was evaluated at five purposively selected high-volume referral hospitals (attending to ≥1500 to 15000 outpatient visits per month), which also have maternity services.Structured questionnaires in the form of a monitoring tool, checklists and observations were used to collect data. Quantitatively, monthly reports submitted by the five facilities to HMIS were reviewed and analyzed for completeness and timeliness. Clinic supervisors were identified from outpatient, inpatient, maternity and laboratory departments as key informants to explore successes and challenges of IDSR implementation. Additionally, IDSR officers visited health facilities and observed the registers and reporting forms used to report IDSR priority conditions and the availability of IDSR guidelines.Results: The five HFs submitted monthly reports from June to August 2017 with a calculated completeness of 80% in June 2017, 60% in July and 40% in August. Timeliness was calculated was at 20% in June, 20% in July and 40% in August. IDSR officers observed that all five HFs document cases of priority diseases in registers during consultations and use daily tally sheets. However, it was observed that diseases reported through the immediate diseases notification system were not all documented in the morbidity registers and vice versa. Health workers reported to be unaware about all diseases that require immediate notification to trigger investigation, hence some disease like perinatal deaths were never notified through the IDNS system during the period of evaluation. All five hospitals reported not utilizing the standard cases definitions provided to identify and report IDSR priority diseases.Conclusions: The proportion of completeness and timeliness from the five HFs during the evaluation period was low compared to WHO recommended standards of >= 80% from all HFs. This therefore, poses challenges in monitoring and responding to the priority conditions as per IDSR standards and recommendations. All five hospitals reported not utilizing the standard cases definitions to identify and report IDSR priority diseases and this poses challenges in comparison of data across sites, monitoring priority diseases, conditions and events and also identifying the alert or epidemic thresholds. There is need to capacitate more health workers on IDSR for Swaziland to strengthen PHS and be able to prevent and control public health threats timely.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. S5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Nsubuga ◽  
Okey Nwanyanwu ◽  
John N Nkengasong ◽  
David Mukanga ◽  
Murray Trostle

Author(s):  
Diana Hart

All countries are faced with the problem of the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCD): implement prevention strategies eff ectively, keep up the momentum with long term benefi ts at the individual and the population level, at the same time tackling hea lth inequalities. Th e aff ordability of therapy and care including innovative therapies is going to be one of the key public health priorities in the years to come. Germany has taken in the prevention and control of NCDs. Germany’s health system has a long history of guaranteeing access to high-quality treatment through universal health care coverage. Th r ough their membership people are entitled to prevention and care services maintaining and restoring their health as well as long term follow-up. Like in many other countries general life expectancy has been increasing steadily in Germany. Currently, the average life expectancy is 83 and 79 years in women and men, respectively. Th e other side of the coin is that population aging is strongly associated with a growing burden of disease from NCDs. Already over 70 percent of all deaths in Germany are caused by four disease entities: cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes. Th ese diseases all share four common risk factors: smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of physical activity and overweight. At the same time, more and more people become long term survivors of disease due to improved therapy and care. Th e German Government and public health decision makers are aware of the need for action and have responded by initiating and implementing a wide spectrum of activities. One instrument by strengthening primary prevention is the Prevention Health Care Act. Its overarching aim is to prevent NCDs before they can manifest themselves by strengthening primary prevention and health promotion in diff erent sett ings. One of the main emphasis of the Prevention Health Care Act is the occupational health promotion at the workplace.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
WO Adebimpe ◽  
K Adabanija ◽  
DO Ibirongbe

Background: Health care workers have critical roles to play in breaking the chain of infections in health care settings. The outbreak of Lassa Fever and Ebola Virus Disease in the West African sub-region in recent times is a rationale for a dire need for a strong epidemic preparedness system. The objective of the study is to assess the knowledge and practice of preparedness for infectious disease prevention and control among healthcare workers in secondary health care facilities in Osogbo, Nigeria.Methods: It was a Descriptive cross sectional study and 340 healthcare workers were selected using a multistage sampling technique. Research instrument used were semi structured pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire. Data was analyzed using the SPSS software version 17 .0.Results: The mean age of the respondents was 42 + 8.9 years. Out of the 340 healthcare workers studied 88.7% had good knowledge, while 72% and 67% had favorable attitude and good practice towards preparedness for infectious disease prevention and control respectively. Three hundred and eight (90.6%) said they washed their hands regularly before and after procedures. Only 37.4% said they still recap used needles and 31.8% said they have Infectious Disease Prevention and Control committee in their health facility. One hundred and ninety eight (58.2%) said they normally practice quarantine for eligible suspected cases and 77.4% perceived themselves to be at occupational risk of contracting infectious diseases. Having more than ten years of working experience was the major predictor of likelihood to have good knowledge, attitude and practice of preparedness on binary logistic regression analysis.Conclusion: The gap between knowledge and practice of preparedness for Infectious Disease and prevention Control calls for improved awareness and training among health workers, and their consistent monitoring towards behavioural change.


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