“Through this project, we hope to establish a decentralized state-based system of surveillance for communicable and non-communicable diseases, so that timely and effective public health actions can be initiated accordingly,” said Dr Nagaraj, BBMP health officer, South Bangalore and project coordinator, IDSP.

“The project is basically aimed to know the exact cause of the disease, likely time of its occurrence and develop ways and means to control the disease,” Dr Nagaraj added.

He told Express, “Everything has been finalised. We are done with the setting up of infrastructure. Forty six centres will be set up in selected BBMP maternity homes and health centres.

Computers for the centres have arrived.

A totally new wing of data entry operators to work in these centres will be appointed through outsourcing in a few days,” he said.

One training programme for the doctors working in these centres have already been conducted by the Directorate of Health and Family Welfare.

Besides, the female medical officers, doctors from the centres and the field workers will be briefed about the functioning in two sittings.

Communicable diseases like malaria, cholera, typhoid, dengue, chikungunya and the recent H1N1 influenza which hit the city, and other non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes which have been growing rapidly, are among the few diseases which will be covered under the IDSP. “Besides, we are also working to improve and upgrade the laboratory support for existing disease surveillance activities and facilitate sharing of relevant information with the health administration,” he added.

On the project, Dr L T Gayatri Devi, Chief Health Officer, BBMP, said: “All the equipment required for the centres have been procured. We will begin the project soon.”

How the system works

Under this project, the field workers will be given a printed format about how to collect the data.

The field workers will be collecting the information from the particular area about the diseases most prevalent in the area and report it to the nearest IDSP centres.

The centres in turn will have to compile the data of diseases and submit the report to the nodal office located at the BBMP-run Pobatty Maternity Home, Sajjanrao Circle, where evaluation of the trend of the disease will be done. Accordingly, action to control the disease will be taken.