Events of CHP
Patna, 24 Feb. While delivering the Welcome Address of the one-day workshop cum training of trainers for district level officers titled “Use of Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) in Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP), Dr. Ranjit Kumar, State Surveillance Officer, IDSP remarked that real time surveillance of diseases in an integrated form has become very important in the modern age. As health policy is devised on the basis of reporting of data, the reporting system in the state needs to be strengthened. This program was organized by Center for Health Policy (CHP) at ADRI in collaboration with Bihar State Health Society, Government of Bihar.
Professor Prabhat P Ghosh, Member Secretary, ADRI’s Keynote Address emphasized that spending on health needs to be optimized as resources are limited. Physical infrastructure needs to be coordinated with manpower. For example, a hospital with a good building is effective only when its doctors are also present.
Dr. Devang Jariwala of WHO held out that all health portals were going to be joined into the IHIP shortly and so, IHIP is the future. The field level staff needed to be trained so that reporting of data will come in. Dr. Niraj Kumar, of National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) presented an overview of the IHIP. IHIP provides real time information on communicable disease surveillance for decision makers to take action. It covers 33 epidemiologically important diseases which are only thirteen diseases under IDSP. WHO Representative Dr. Rajesh Kr. Verma pointed out that lack of manpower was an important constraint and he promised to look into this issue. Strengthening of weekly meetings at block and district level needs to be continued.
Following the Inaugural Session, seven technical sessions were organized. Some of them had titles like “Entering and Managing Data within S, P, L Forms; Cases of Death”, “Outbreak Management”, “Administrative functions under IHIP Portal”, etc.
Nearly 230 participants from District Surveillance Units of the 38 districts of Bihar were present on the occasion. They included Additional Chief Medical Officers (ACMOs), District Epidemiologists (DEs), District Data Managers (DDMs), Data Entry Operators (DEOs), Lab Technicians and District Monitoring and Evaluation Officers (DM & Es).
Mr. Kumar Kaustubh, State Entomologist, SHS, Government of Bihar was the Master of Ceremonies and Mr. Alam Mozahid, CHP, ADRI proposed the Vote of Thanks.