Health dept instructed to enhance surveillance of influenza, pneumonia cases
The Deputy Director of Health Services in all the districts and the deans of all the medical college hospitals have been informed to keep a check on these cases
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CHENNAI: After a surge in the incidence of pneumonia in children in China due to usual causes like Influenza, Mycoplasma Pneumoniae and SARS-CoV-2, the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine has informed the state health department officials to enhance the surveillance of pneumonia cases.
The Union Health Ministry through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) had a meeting with all the State public health officers on increasing the surveillance of Respiratory illness, Pneumonia including Severe Acute Respiratory Illness, Acute Respiratory Illness, Influenza Like Illness and report them on the IDSP-IHIP (Integrated Health Information Platform) portal on a regular basis.
The Union Health Ministry has recommended to enhance outpatient and inpatient surveillance for such respiratory illness predominantly affecting Children.
The Deputy Director of Health Services in all the districts and the deans of all the medical college hospitals have been informed to keep a check on these cases as part of the enhanced disease surveillance.
The health care facilities also need to be strengthened to manage the patients.
A letter from the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine to the healthcare facility officials said that it should also be ensured that the health facilities like Medical College and Hospitals including private facility are requested to report cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Illness, Acute respiratory Illness, Influenza like Illness in IDSP-IHIP portal.
The deans of Medical College Hospitals and other allied institutions have been instructed to step up the surveillance of both out-patient as well as in patient and report cases of ARI, SARI and ILI in the IDSP- IHIP portal.
