Madras Week | In charge of the health of a city

Wherever we go, there it is. The COVID-19 pandemic has overwritten several scripts, laid to waste the plans of everyone. And this year, as the city celebrates Madras Day, in commemoration of a pact inked 382 years ago, it makes sense to anchor the overarching theme to the disruptions a pandemic causes. For a week from now, these columns will open a window to the past to examine aspects of the city that are in some way connected to such disruptions. While Madras Day events are low key and the usual pomp and frenetic activity that Chennaiites see during this week in August are missing, people have taken the online route out, as with most things these past couple of years. For Chennai is still a city that its residents love, and harking back to its connect with good ol’ Madras is an annual ritual that has come to stay

“Members of the public are further warned to avoid exposing themselves to the infection by attending theatres, cinemas and other places of public resort,” reads part of a note issued by K. Raghavendra Rao, Health Officer of the Corporation of Madras, in October 1918 when Spanish Flu ravaged the city. If the period was not mentioned, the note can easily be mistaken for a statement issued by the current City Health Officer of the municipal body, which has since become the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). Its striking similarity to the advisories issued amid COVID-19 aside, the note, which was part of the detailed statements issued by the then Health Officer through newspapers, underscores the role played by the Public Health Department of the city, which was among the worst affected in India during both pandemics. The Department has tackled at least three pandemics since the 20th century — the Spanish Flu of 1918, the influenza pandemic of 1957 and COVID-19 — besides the outbreaks of malaria, dengue, cholera, filaria, plague and other diseases. Owing to Chennai being the only place in the State where the district is coterminous with the municipal corporation, the civic body takes precedence in the administration of the city. Unlike other districts where the Deputy Directors of the Health and Family Welfare Department play an important role, it is the GCC’s Public Health Department that handles health-related matters of the entire Chennai. The post of Health Officer was created in 1892, over two centuries after the Corporation was formed in 1688, when its limit was just around 10 km from Fort St. George. The city’s first maternity care centre was opened in 1917. Over the years, the title of Health Officer changed to Chief Health Officer and the Department underwent a tremendous transformation in its administrative set-up and ambit of work, with the city’s population increasing more than 16 times from what it was a century ago and its area expanding to 426 sq. km.