Disease and Nutrition Surveillance Project

Agency : European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO), World Health Organisation

Disease Surveillance is a key public health tool used in monitoring disease trends, estimating magnitude of the diseases, identifying high risk populations and geographic areas and early warning and forecasting of outbreaks of epidemics. The National Health Policy 2002 directs the Government of India and the State governments to design and establish a disease surveillance system all over the country.

The Institute designed and implemented a disease and nutrition surveillance system in four districts of Rajasthan. It covered 25 blocks, 195 PHCs and 1138 sub-centres. The surveillance system included 16 diseases, acute malnutrition, anaemia and vitamin A deficiency. Formats for villages, sub-centres, PHCs and districts were developed. Each health unit was required to report the selected diseases on a fortnightly basis. A computer software was developed to enter data and make projections for disease trends and measure morbidity and mortality.

The project was implemented in close collaboration with the state and district health systems to ensure sustainability and also to build capacity of the health system. A series of training programmes for the district level health officials, medical officers and supervisors were conducted to impart skills in conducting surveillance, analysing data and interpretation results.

In addition to institutional reporting mechanism, a periodic rapid household survey was conducted in 375 villages covering over 26000 households mainly to detect malnutrition among children and women.

The project was a major learning experience in several ways. Firstly, it showed that it was feasible to set up disease surveillance on a large scale. Secondly, it revealed that the existing health system could undertake this activity effectively with the available health manpower. Thirdly, the model developed at IIHMR was very effective and could be adopted by the health system in accordance with the national health policy directives.


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