The high population density, large number of non-resident citizens and international travelers and presence of human habitation in the fringe areas and inside the forests increase Kerala’s vulnerability to large-scale disease outbreaks, especially zoonotic diseases. Though the state managed zoonotic disease outbreaks such as Nipah and Covid-19, there are critical bottlenecks in preparedness. This includes lack of health surveillance, coordination and critical infrastructure systems at the district and local levels. The Resilient Kerala PforR intends to strengthen the public health systems for disease outbreaks preparedness and prevention.
Early detection, early diagnosis, and early control measures, as advocated in the One Health approach, are most effective in reducing the costs of controlling outbreaks. Controlling disease outbreaks reduces economic disruptions and hence losses in economic growth and productivity losses. The concept of One Health will be encouraged, and One Health platforms will be established at state, district and at Local Self Government Governments (LSG) level to enhance coordination, collaboration, joint surveillance, preparedness, and response to counter the health hazards at local level. About 2,50,000 community members will be capacitated to identify and address any kind of sudden and visible changes in the environment or abnormal conditions like color difference in waterbodies or any kind of common health issues to human beings or animals or plants etc in a particular area.
Through this innovative program, the GoK intent to strengthen the public health systems for identifying and enhancing the management of disease outbreaks in Idukki, Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Alappuzha districts by strengthening and operationalizing Integrated Public Health Laboratories (IPHLs). An IT-enabled platform will also be established for community-level networking of Prevention of Epidemics and Infectious Diseases (PEID) cells to undertake operational and applied research.
The disease outbreak surveillance and response platform together with local Disaster Risk Management (DRM) systems forms the vanguard of local resilience, bringing together the LSGs, line departments and communities to address any kind of zoonotic disease outbreaks in the State.