Chennai
According to the land acquisition and resettlement due diligence report (dated June 2021) prepared by the civic body for the Kosasthalaiyar basin project, measures would be taken to enhance the preparedness in low-income, flood-prone urban communities and their responses to future pandemics and floods.
While the storm water project is being funded by the Asian Development Bank, the preparedness projects would be funded by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR).
As per the report, 17 community health centres in flood-prone, low-income urban communities in Tiruvottiyur, Manali, Madhavaram and Ambattur zones will be strengthened by providing designated isolation rooms, wash facilities, adequate number of toilets for patients and other facilities.
“For lack of essential public health personnel and adequate health facilities in low-income urban communities, the local government is unable to identify sources of infection for COVID-19 and other communicable diseases or take effective early measures to monitor and contain community transmission. As low-income urban communities are hotspots of COVID-19 transmission in Chennai, the government needs to establish an innovative disease surveillance system to better address the aforementioned challenges,” the report said.
As per the report, eight mobile medical and diagnostic units would conduct scheduled camps with spot sampling of infectious diseases including COVID-19. It proposed strengthening water quality surveillance and wastewater epidemiology for water-borne diseases and COVID-19 through four mobile water quality labs, which would spot test and collect samples for centralised testing. “This will give real-time picture of geographic and demographic trends in the local transmission of diseases, generating early warning information that will allow local governments to act quickly to prevent the spread of disease,” the report added.
Apart from those projects, the civic body will provide wash services and behaviour interventions in 65 schools in the flood-prone areas of the four zones. An official said that the projects would be implemented after getting approval from the funding agencies.
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