Health dept prepares year-long action plan for seasonal diseases

JAIPUR: The health department has made a year-long action plan to combat seasonal diseases.

“We have come up with yearly plan to combat seasonal diseases, which will help in keeping the number of patients low,” said Dr VK Mathur, director, public health.

He said the plan will focus on surveillance, capacity building, organising outreach camps and sensitising vulnerable section of the society.

So far, the department had been dealing with individual diseases during the outbreak due to which other diseases would lose the priority.

According to the new action plan, all seasonal diseases will be simultaneously monitored and necessary action will be taken.

The health department will keep surveillance on all cases of seasonal diseases throughout the year including dengue, malaria, chikungunya, scrub typhus, zika and swine flu.

Entomologists will be doing their work throughout the year instead of only during the monsoon on vector borne diseases.

In regard to capacity building, training was imparted to the trainers, who further impart t raining t o people i n t heir respective areas.

It was noticed that message is not percolating properly to the down staff and gets diluted. Therefore, it has been decided that all would be imparted train- i ng by t he master t r a i ner through video conferencing. Along with panchayati raj institutions (PRIS) and public representatives will involved and they will be sensitised twice in year.

The department will also rope in AYUSH (ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy) experts.

They will be used for monitoring various works related to seasonal diseases along with will be used as resource persons for conducting surveys and their active role in campaigns. Outreach camps will be organised frequently in high focus areas.

Private hospitals will be asked to follow the standard treatment procedures as per the Government of India guidelines to treat patients of seasonal diseases.