'Health surveillance unit to become functional soon'

Patna: The proposed metropolitan surveillance unit (MSU) in the city is expected to become functional by the end of this year. A memorandum of understanding was signed on Thursday between Patna Municipal Corporation, State Health Society-Bihar and the National Centre for Disease Control for setting up the MSU to forecast the outbreak of communicable diseases and also work on the ways to control their spread.

The decision to set up MSUs in different cities across the country was taken after the COVID-19 outbreak. Altogether 20 such centres will come up in the country, including the one in Patna. The stress will be on controlling the outbreak of such diseases in densely populated cities. The surveillance units will act as rapid response centres.

State Health Society executive director Sanjay Kumar Singh said communicable diseases like dengue, chikungunya, scrub typhus, tuberculosis and zika virus would be monitored from the proposed centre. "Data analysis will be done and the source of spread will be identified. The vulnerable areas will be identified and efforts will be made to stop further spread of the diseases. While the focus will be on curbing communicable diseases initially, non-communicable diseases will also be monitored in the future," he added.

Singh said the MSU would become functional in the next four months as the building for the same has already been constructed ready by the PMC near Rajaghat. Epidemiologists, entomologists and microbiologists will be deployed at the MSU for research-related work.