Bhubaneswar: The State Government on Thursday handed over 3.125 acres of land for establishment of a branch of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) here at Andharua, in the outskirt of Bhubaneswar.
Khurda chief district medical officer has handed over the land to Atul Goel, DGHS & Director NCDC here at Sub Registrar’s Office in presence of Health and Family Welfare Secretary Shalini Pandit.
Odisha perennially faces challenges of disasters such as cyclone, flood, heat stroke. Further emerging infections such as COVID-19 pandemic and re-emerging infections such as Anthrax, H1N1, Dengue, JE along with other water borne and vector borne diseases like Diarrhoea, dysentery, Jaundice, measles, malaria, typhoid leads to morbidity and mortality in the community.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, H&FW department executed successful preventive & containment measures to avert cases and deaths in a strategic manner which was appreciated globally.
The State strengthened the existing 32 District Public Health Laboratories & developed its own network of 30 RT-PCR laboratories for testing, diagnosis and timely dissemination of results in the community.
In order to strengthen our surveillance and public health infrastructure, the State Government had given approval for establishing a branch of NCDC with a State-of-the-art laboratory in Odisha.
Establishment of NCDC branch in Odisha will be a milestone in the public health scenario of the state as it is going to support the state in all epidemics, pandemics and other outbreaks and will establish coordination with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The NSDC branch will support the State in strengthening integrated disease surveillance activities, post pandemic surveillance, laboratory surveillance of emerging and reemerging infections of public health Importance as per international health regulations, officials said
It will also help the state in expanding a gamut of diagnostic services for communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases of public health importance and will be the apex lab for 32 District Public health Laboratories, State Referral laboratories at MCHs and other Laboratories at state (State Public Health Lab at CH, BBSR) and sub district level.
The Centre will also provide the hand holding for biosafety & biosecurity along with the quality assurance activities for different laboratories.
It will also monitor the emerging trend of diseases along with vector control measures through entomological surveillance and also support in operational research activities.
The NSDC branch would provide timely guidance for inventory management of logistics, storage and distribution of diagnostic kits, drugs & PPEs and develop a Laboratory Management information System (LMIS) for ensuring timely communication of results and an early warning system for all districts.
