Bihar: State archives to upload papers on disease control

PATNA: The Bihar State Archives (BSA), as a part of its social responsibility, will upload various documents on public health, disease control and hygiene to its website in order to tell the people the way these epidemics were controlled, so that it could prove beneficial at a time when different vaccines were being developed to control the Covid-19 pandemic.

The BSA has preserved various records of public health and disease control methods used in the colonial era.

As per the information shared by the state information and public relations department (IPRD), the problems due to different epidemics have been faced worldwide for centuries and efforts to control them have been done both at the government and non-government level. For instance, during the colonial era, India had faced various epidemics like cholera, plague, malaria and smallpox. In the beginning, there used to be lack of proper vaccines and medicines. Hence, Britishers also had to face challenges in India.

An IPRD release further stated that the primary motive of the British was to generate revenue in India, but large number of deaths due to any epidemic would have also impacted the revenue generation. Hence, they had to think about controlling the epidemics. It was made compulsory to work for the control of epidemics in military camps. This led to the entry of allopathy in India. However, it was not easy to implement this in India because of conservative thought and the British had to struggle initially. Apart from inventing medicines, vaccines were also introduced to control epidemics like cholera, malaria and smallpox.