To commemorate the World Health Day 2014, WHO Country for India in partnership with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare is organising a national consultation at New Delhi on 4 April 2014 to highlight how the health system can be strengthened across the continuum of care to address vector-borne diseases.
World Health Day (WHD) is celebrated on 7 April every year to mark the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948. Every year a theme is selected which highlights a priority area of public health. The WHD campaign this year, ‘small bite: big threat’ is aimed at raising awareness about the threats posed by insect vectors and the bacteria, viruses, and parasites they carry, collectively known as vector-borne diseases (VBDs); and to motivate families and communities to protect themselves through simple measures.
Speaking about the national consultation, Dr Nata Menabde, WHO Representative to India said, “In India, the burden and risk of vector-borne diseases is massive. The burden is concentrated in the remote areas of the country with the poorest health systems where the population is most exposed. Weak collaboration across agencies, sectors, and levels of government, including the regulatory mechanisms are some of the key challenges. Now is the time for robust collaboration and action across all sectors and for targeted community-level sensitization.”
“The consultation will deliberate on scaling-up action on vector-borne diseases and also that the approaches to VBDs are integrated across the sectors to be effective to contribute to stronger health systems,” she added.
The national consultation will look at the concept of one health, integrating social determinants of health, basic health promotion and education, vector control and veterinary public health. Emphasis will be on improving disease surveillance systems, especially for the VBDs and on ways to improve the management of the supply chain and integration of these diseases into the primary health care services.
Monitoring and evaluation of the impact interventions against the VBDs would also be addressed. The need for improvement of capacity for prompt diagnosis and testing of all the suspected cases of the vector-borne diseases is another area of consideration.
The national consultation will be attended by national policymakers, programme managers and other stakeholders. State-level consultations will also be held at Chennai, Lucknow, Kolktata, and Patna.