Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 04:12:54 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: India: Disease Surveillance Program Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"Disease surveillance programme to combat biowarfare threat <http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/180901/dLNAT85.asp>
PTI New Delhi, September 18
With the experts warning of a real threat of biological warfare, National Institute of Communicable Diseases proposes to launch an Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme to detect and respond to such cases. The NICD proposes to launch the integrated surveillance programme during the tenth plan, Minister of State for Health A Raja said today inaugurating a `National Workshop for Developing a Surveillance Mechanism for Pathogens with Biological Warfare Potential,' here.
The programme would be an extension of the currently running National Disease Surveillance Programme and would cover the entire country, Raja said.
Stating that public health system should be able to respond fast to the threat of biological terrorism as it could impose heavy demands on public health and health care systems, Raja said the institute had taken up the responsibility of building up the surveillance programme for pathogens with biological warfare potential.
While developing this programme, the NICD should take into account the agents which have high potential for their use for bioterrorism, he said, adding laboratories, which can undertake diagnostic work using standard protocol and testing procedures for those agents, should be identified.
NICD chief Dr K K Datta said to counter the threat of bio-terrorism, surveillance centres would be set up in the border districts and all metropolitan cities.
Currently, the disease surveillance programme is being run in 80 districts which would be extended to 100 more by the end of ninth plan, Datta said.
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