NITI Aayog released a White Paper outlining the measures to be taken to improve public health surveillance.
Highlights:
♦ Vision 2035: Public health surveillance in India is a continuation of efforts to strengthen the health system.
♦ 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 can span primary, secondary and tertiary care levels. Surveillance is ‘Information for Action’.
♦ Public health surveillance is the continuous, analysis, systematic collection, & interpretation of health-related data, which are essential for planning, implementing and evaluating public health practices
♦ Surveillance is undertaken to inform disease prevention and control measures
♦ We need surveillance
– As an early warning system, identify public health emergencies.
– Guiding public health policies and strategies.
– Document the impact of interventions or achieving specific public health goals/objectives.
– Understand/monitor the epidemiology of diseases, determine priorities and guide public health policies and strategies
