Strategy being worked out for WHO’s health promotion campaign: Health Secretary

Inaugurating a three-day international symposium on the “Impact of Environmental Mutagenesis in the human genome” organised by VIT University here on Thursday, he said, changing lifestyles necessitated for health promotion. Various contributors, including climate change, migration of people and emergence of drug-resistant diseases, have prompted the need for a strong campaign to educate people to keep constant track of their health.

Highlighting the importance of physical training, he said, “People should know the benefits of exercise and do it regularly without waiting for doctor’s advice.” WHO’s health promotion suggests that everyone should take care of their health before consulting a doctor and take control of it.

On people immediately flocking major government hospitals, he said, if primary health centres (PHCs) have 18 types of drugs for promotional health, sub centres have 25 types of drugs for the same purpose. Talking in the same vein, he said that though PHCs and health sub centres were fully equipped to deal with any medical complication, people forget about this and flock to major government hospitals.

A worrisome trend is that people after reading unauthenticated reports about medicines through Google search, develop an aversion towards PHCs, he said.

Radhakrishnan said that the state currently “concentrates on providing easy access to quality healthcare for migratory workers.”

Later interacting with pressmen, while replying to a question on the availability of medicines, he said, district drug warehouses had enough stocks for three months and all medicines were available in government hospitals.

On the pulse polio dates being changed, he said, Tamil Nadu has been polio free for the last 13 years while the nation attained the status three years ago. The central government’s technical advisory committee considering these facts had changed the dates of the pulse polio programme, he added.

When asked about the disease control measures in Tamil Nadu, he said, as of date major diseases like Dengue, Diphtheria, Swine Flu and Bird Flu were “totally under control”, though Indian should always be on watch to prevent entry of high threat pathogens.