As part of the BBMP’s public health strategy, the civic body is working on setting up a Metropolitan Surveillance Unit (MSU) on the premises of the Public Health Institute (PHI). The unit that will be fully funded by the Centre will help the civic body in putting in place a structured surveillance system and identify potential disease outbreaks, said K.V. Thrilok Chandra, BBMP Special Commissioner (Health).
He was speaking at the inauguration of a workshop on “Building back better surveillance systems” jointly organised by Global Learning Collaborative for Health Systems Resilience, Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS), and Access Health International in Bengaluru.
Asserting the importance of integrated disease surveillance, the official said surveillance plays a pivotal role in public health, serving as a crucial epidemiological tool.
Hub of disease surveillance
Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the workshop, Dr. Chandra said MSU will function as a hub of disease surveillance in the city and facilitate real-time reporting of data on outbreak prone diseases from public and private sectors.
“The MSU will generate and verify alerts on health-related events from different sources, support collection and analysis samples for water, food, vector borne and zoonotic diseases. It will facilitate collaborative surveillance by ensuring onboarding of all reporting units - private and the government,” he said.
The BBMP has already set up a ‘One Health Cell’ to address public health challenges with primary focus on preventing outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, he pointed out.
Anil Kumar, Principal Adviser at the Centre’s National Centre for Disease Control, made a presentation on the “Current status of the surveillance system in India and the gaps that need attention to build back better surveillance systems.”
Waste water surveillance
The inaugural session included a panel discussion on waste water surveillance. Farah Ishtiaq, Principal Scientist at TIGS, who was one of the panelists, said waste water surveillance taken up in Bengaluru should be emulated to set up environmental surveillance in other cities.
