11 June 2011
By Umesh Isalkar
Pune, India
Aims To Consolidate Vigilance, Reporting System Of Ailments
The Pune Municipal Corporation has made a budgetary provision of Rs 1 crore for strengthening surveillance of malaria and other vector-borne and waterborne diseases. The idea is to consolidate vigilance and reporting system of diseases, which have the potential to turn into an epidemic if remained uncontrolled for sometime.
"All private clinics, nursing homes and hospitals will be roped in under the disease surveillance project. To carry out the surveillance work 140 people will be recruited on contractual basis.
The project is expected to get operational by October end,” R R Pardeshi, health chief of the PMC told TOI on Friday.
Sadashiv Patole, head of the insect-control department of the PMC, said that, "Each and every case of malaria registered at clinics, nursing homes and hospital will come on the PMC’s radar once the project is implemented. One may get to see more cases simply because the detection rate is increased due to renewed surveillance and reporting.”
At present, the city’s surveillance activity is mainly dependent on reporting from public health systems. "Once the project is implemented, all private clinical establishments will also start reporting vector-borne and waterborne diseases registered at their units. This will make the disease profile of the season more representative and help check them early,” Patole added.
Municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak and deputy municipal commissioner Sudhakar Deshmukh held a meeting on the issue recently, Pardeshi said.
One malaria death in city, admits PMC
The PMC on Friday accepted that there was a malaria casualty in the city. On Thursday, TOI had reported about three malaria deaths at Sassoon hospital between January and April this year.
"Of the three deaths, one is definitely within the city limits. We cannot take responsibility of the other two as they are not residents of the city,” said R R Pardeshi, health chief of the PMC. "Only one death, that of a Karve Road resident, will be counted in the city’s malaria mortality,” Pardeshi added.
The PMC conducted an investigation and found that the victim had, besides malaria, other co-mrobid conditions like jaundice, liver inflammation and pulmonary oedema, Pardeshi said. Of the remaining two victims, one was a resident of Khadakwasla. Hence the case would go under Pune rural. The other victim was from Sangli district.
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