‘Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India’
Context: NITI Aayog released a white paper: Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India with the vision: To make India’s public health surveillance system more responsive and predictive to enhance preparedness for action at all levels.
- Citizen-friendly public health surveillance system will ensure individual privacy and confidentiality, enabled with a client feedback mechanism.
- Improved data-sharing mechanism between Centre and states for better disease detection, prevention, and control.
- India aims to provide regional and global leadership in managing events that constitute a public health emergency of international concern.
- ‘Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India’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) is an important function that cuts across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of care.
Surveillance is ‘Information for Action’
- The Covid-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to revisit (re) emerging diseases due to increased interaction between human-animal-environment.
- Early identification of this interference is essential to break the chain of transmissions and create a resilient surveillance system.
- This vision document articulates the vision and highlights the building blocks.
- It envisions a citizen-friendly public health system, which will involve stakeholders at all levels, be it individual, community, health care facilities or laboratories, all while protecting the individual’s privacy and confidentiality.
- The white paper lays out India’s vision 2035 for public health surveillance through the integration of the three-tiered public health system into Ayushman Bharat.
- It also spells out the need for expanded referral networks and enhanced laboratory capacity.
- The building blocks for this vision are an interdependent federated system of governance between the Centre and states, a new data-sharing mechanism that involves the use of new analytics, health informatics, and data science including innovative ways of disseminating ‘information for action’.
- The paper is envisaged to serve as a vision document to propel public health surveillance in India and establish India as a global leader in the area.
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