19 Jan 2023

Patna 19 January.  Currently, the performance scoring of real-time reporting of suspected cases of infectious diseases and impending outbreaks on Integrated Disease Surveillance Program module of Integrated Health Information Platform (IDSP-IHIP) as assessed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Government of India (GoI) has placed Bihar among the top ten states in the country during 1^st January 2023 to 16 January 2023. Although Bihar has made commendable progress in ranking, its reporting quality needs to be ratcheted up to guide the evidence-based decision-making currently by the policy makers.  This was enunciated by Professor Prabhat P Ghosh, Member-Secretary and Director, CHP of ADRI while delivering the Welcome Address at a workshop on real-time quality reporting on IHIP Portal in Bihar. This workshop was organized jointly over the last two days by the State Health Society, Bihar (SHSB) and Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna. IHIP portal enables us to get in advance early warning of any unusual occurrence of communicable diseases in the community.

Delivering a Special Address, Dr. Rajesh Verma, WHO (Bihar) emphasized the importance of ensuring quality and real time reporting to handle any state emergency. Dr. Ranjeet Kumar, State Surveillance Officer, SHSB opined that the quality of the IHIP reporting will get a boost only when reporting from all designated primary health care centers (PHC) is ensured. Dr. Niraj Kumar, Consultant Epidemiologist, CSU, IDSP, NCDC, New Delhi held out that the Bihar model of IDSP will become an icon all over India if we take a pledge to improve its quality. Also, he said that Bihar’s quality of reporting data is on the upswing. Dr. Devang Jariwala, IHIP Coordinator, WHO conducted extensive interactive sessions with key official functionaries from all 38 districts. Dr Ragini Mishra, the State Epidemiologist also highlighted the issues related to quality and the need to rectify it. As outbreak reporting and response is the core of IDSP-IHIP, comprehensive hands-on training was provided to all the district-level IHIP functionaries. The basic objective of the program is to generate an early warning signal of any impending disease outbreak, therefore focus of the training was to empower the district officials on quality outbreak reporting in addition to routine data reporting.

In the technical session, representatives from each District IDSP cell shared their experiences and resolved their concerns regarding IHIP implementation with the central team. Shree Sandip Shekhar Priadarshi, Deputy Secretary, State Health Society, Bihar and Dr. Asish Satapathy, Regional Team Leader, WHO were also present on the occasion. Dr. Ragini Mishra delivered the Vote of Thanks.