City to host India’s first int’l public health meet in Dec

To mark the centenary year of the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, the first International Public Health Conference will be held in Chennai for 3-days in December for the first time in India.

Logo for the celebrations of the DPH and the conference was unveiled by the Health Minister Ma Subramanian at an event held on Thursday evening.

“The centenary conference will bring together public health professionals, pioneers, and researchers to Tamil Nadu from across the globe, who will share their skills and experiences on a variety of topics. The journey of 100 years of Tamil Nadu Public Health Department will be showcased at the International Health Conference as an exhibition,” said Subramanian.

A revamped Civil Registration System website was launched at the event. It will enable direct download of birth and death certificates. The revamp cost Rs 75 lakh.

The process of uploading certificates on the website has started at 16,348 centres by the Registrars of Births and Deaths of the Revenue Department, Municipality, Corporation, Municipality and Health Department in 38 districts. After January 1, 2018, birth and death registration work was done by different departments using different software across the State. Uniform software has been developed to make it user-friendly.

A release from the department stated that uploading birth and death records on the website of the panchayat, municipality, primary health centres, and rural areas has begun for the certificates between 2013 to 2017 as part of the first phase. Funds have been allocated to computerise birth and death records in each taluka office.

The Volume 2 of the DPH’s annual newsletter, which has published 24 issues so far, was also released by Subramanian at the event.