Kerala panel recommends coordinated, surveillance-driven approach to combat infectious diseases

The State-level high power steering committee set up by the Kerala government to update the State epidemic management plan has recommended the adoption of a coordinated, surveillance-oriented and One Health approach to strengthen infectious disease prevention and control activities in the State.

The committee’s preliminary recommendations were presented to Health Minister K. Muraleedharan on Monday.

The Committee noted that coordinated action between various departments is necessary to make the prevention of the epidemic more effective, and in this regard, it is important to convene as soon as possible a high-level interdepartmental meeting, chaired by the Minister of Health and involving the departments of Health, Education, Local Self-Government, Forestry, Agriculture, Public Works and Livestock, to coordinate disease prevention efforts at the State level.

As infectious diseases such as dengue are likely to intensify in the coming weeks, it has been recommended to conduct an intensive mosquito eradication, waste management and sanitation campaign across the state for the next three months.

It has been proposed to establish a Unified Public Health Command and Control Center that would simultaneously monitor hospital data and field-level disease surveillance. Daily disease data from public and private hospitals, One Health data, and data from food safety and water quality surveillance should be integrated into a single dashboard. This will enable early detection of waterborne, mosquito-borne and zoonotic disease threats and enable rapid preventive decisions from local to ministerial levels.

The committee recommended conducting hotspot mapping of various infectious diseases to intensify preventive measures. Local water supplies should be regularly checked for contamination by health workers and food safety officials, and water testing kits should be provided at the field level. Food outlets in a region should be subject to periodic and continuous checks.

The disease surveillance system in the state should be strengthened by coordinating the activities of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project under the Ministry of Health, Prevention of Epidemic and Infectious Diseases (PEID) cells in Medical Colleges and the Kerala Center for Disease Control (KCDC). Effective steps should be taken to obtain disease data from the private sector and meaningful participation of private sector clinicians in epidemic control activities should be ensured.

Treatment guidelines for infectious diseases should be updated periodically and made available to all physicians and healthcare professionals in both the public and private sectors throughout the state.

The committee also recommended modernizing surveillance activities, improving data analysis through public health research institutions, assigning epidemiologists to each region, and exploring the use of productive artificial intelligence to improve the effectiveness of disease surveillance.

Real-time data on zoonotic diseases such as bird flu and rabies should be included in the State Health portal.

He also noted the need to fill more than 800 vacancies in the Health department for stricter distribution of antibiotics, vaccination of vulnerable groups such as the elderly against flu, improved infection control measures in hospitals and training of all elected representatives of local self-government bodies to coordinate disease prevention and sanitation activities at the ward level.