Corporation to monitor functioning of Metropolitan Surveillance Unit

The Greater Chennai Corporation will start overseeing the functioning of a Metropolitan Surveillance Unit (MSU) to be set up on the premises of the Communicable Diseases Hospital in Tondiarpet

The Greater Chennai Corporation will start overseeing the functioning of a Metropolitan Surveillance Unit (MSU) to be set up on the premises of the Communicable Diseases Hospital in Tondiarpet.

The civic body has been a part of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) since 2009 and the establishment of an MSU is a part of intensifying efforts to understand the nature and causes of diseases in an urban context, said City Health Officer M. Jagadeesan, who has been appointed nodal officer of the MSU.

According to operational guidelines for MSUs published by the National Centre for Disease Control in 2022, Chennai is one of the 20 metros for MSUs and falls in the Tier 1 category besides Hyderabad and Delhi. “We will collect reports from public and private hospitals and analyse the data to understand trends and predict future outbreaks or pandemics”, he said. 

The MSU was a part of Mayor R. Priya’s announcement during the presentation of the Corporation Budget for 2023-24 and on Friday, the council approved a Memorandum of Understanding among the Corporation, the Department of Health and Family Welfare and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). The MoU will set into motion the procurement of resources for the MSU and its operation.

The MSU will function as a hub of disease surveillance in the city to facilitate real-time reporting of surveillance data on outbreak-prone diseases from public and private hospitals. This will result in coordinated planning and responses to disease outbreaks and improve a city’s capacity for disease surveillance. The MSU will primarily focus on diseases listed under the IDSP such as malaria, chicken pox and dog and snake bites.

According to an official, the MSU in the Communicable Diseases Hospital will begin functioning with a staff of four people, including a microbiologist, which will increase depending on support received from NCDC. The MSU will identify alerts for communicable disease outbreaks and provide technical guidance, said the official.