30 July 2009
New Delhi, India
The National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) has been renamed as National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as part of it
The Government of India has decided to improve the infrastructure of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) with an investment of Rs 500 crore .
As part of the move the government has renamed NICD as National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and has planned to set up state–of–the–art–laboratories from the enhanced budgetary allocations to it.
NICD is the top communicable disease research body of the country. It has played a key role in eradicating small pox, Guinea worm and yaws.
“The NCDC will provide enhanced quality services. It will play a more meaningful role in the development of public health policy framework, conducting risk factor surveys for non–communicable diseases and developing human resource in public health, ” Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said.
He announced that in the 11th five year plan, upgradation of NICD to NCDC has been taken up as a new initiative with the budgetary allocation of Rs 510 crore .
“We have also obtained in principle approval for this from the Planning Commission.The fund will be utilised to build “state–of–the–art laboratories ”, he said.
There will be upgradation of infrastructure, modernisation of equipment and augmenting the manpower of the institute.
The institute will also help in developing a network of public health institutions and improving diagnostic capabilities for emerging and re–emerging infections.
“The NCDC will modernise research for disease control, develop Epidemic Intelligence Services (EIS) for prompt response to disease outbreaks and develop disease outbreak forecasting models,” Azad said.
The Minister said all these tasks are essential as India faces a peculiar dilemma of having to combat “triple burden of the diseases”, reports IANS.
While there is an unfinished agenda of dealing effectively with common communicable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, there is increasing problem of emerging infectious diseases.
Over two dozen new disease causing agents have emerged in the preceding three decades.
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