The State-level high-power steering committee set up by the Kerala government to update the State epidemic management plan has recommended that a coordinated, surveillance-driven and One Health approach be adopted to strengthen infectious disease prevention and control activities in the State.

The preliminary recommendations of the committee were submitted to Health Minister K. Muraleedharan on Monday.

The committee noted that while coordinated action across various departments is essential to make epidemic prevention more effective and in that context, it was important that a high-level inter-departmental meeting – chaired by the Health Minister and including Health, Education, Local Self-Government, Forest, Agriculture, Public Works, and Animal Husbandry departments — is convened as soon as possible to coordinate State-level disease prevention efforts.

It recommended that as infectious diseases like dengue are likely to intensify in the coming weeks, an intensive mosquito eradication, waste management, and sanitation campaign be conducted across the State for the next three months.

It has suggested that a Unified Public Health Command and Control Centre be set up, which would monitor hospital data and field-level disease surveillance simultaneously. Daily disease data from government and private hospitals, One Health data, and data from food safety and water quality surveillance should be integrated on a single dashboard. This will enable early identification of waterborne, mosquito-borne, and zoonotic disease threats, and allow rapid preventive decisions to be taken from local to ministerial level.

The committee suggested that hotspot mapping of various infectious diseases be done to intensify preventive measures. Local water sources should be regularly checked for contamination by health workers and food safety officials, for which, field-level water testing kits should be supplied. Food outlets in a locality should be continuously subjected to checks on a periodic basis.

The disease surveillance system in the State should be strengthened by coordinating the activities of Integrated Disease Surveillance Project under the Health department, Prevention of Epidemic and Infectious Diseases (PEID) cells in Medical Colleges, and the Kerala Centre for Disease Control (KCDC) . Effective steps should be taken to obtain disease data from the private sector and meaningful participation of private sector clinicians should be roped in for epidemic control activities.

Treatment guidelines for communicable diseases should be periodically updated and made available to all doctors and health workers in both government and private sectors across the State.

The committee has also recommended the modernisation of surveillance activities, improving data analysis through public health research institutions, appointing epidemiologists in every district and exploring the use of generative AI to improve the efficacy of disease surveillance

Real-time data on zoonotic diseases such as avian influenza and rabies should be incorporated into the State Health portal

It has also pointed to the 800 plus vacancies across the Health department which need to be filled for stricter antibiotic dispensing, vaccination of vulnerable groups like the elderly against influenza, enhanced infection control measures in hospitals and training for all elected representatives of local self-government bodies to coordinate ward-level disease prevention and sanitation activities.