HEALTH MINISTER REVIEWS SITUATION ARISING OUT OF SPREAD OF PNEUMONIA
VIRUS ABROAD
ACTION PLAN STRENGTHENED TO PREVENT
SPREAD TO INDIA
The Minister
for Health & Family Welfare, Smt. Sushma Swaraj, today reviewed
the situation relating to reports of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) in different parts of the world. The meeting was
attended by Mr. S.K. Naik, Secretary(Health), Dr. S.P. Agarwal,
DG, DGHS, Dr. N.K. Ganguly, DG, ICMR, Dr. Shiv Lal, Director,
NICD, Mr. S.K. Narula, Chairman, Airport Authority of India, Dr.
R.K. Sharma, Medical Superintendent AIIMS, Shri R.K. Jain, Joint
Secretary(Ports), Shri P. Srivastava, Joint Secretary(Foreigners)
Ministry of Home Affairs, Dr. N. Zaidi, Joint Secretary, Ministry
of Civil Aviation, Dr. S. Chugh, Head of Department(Medicine),
RML Hospital, Dr. A.S. Abdullah, Coordinator Communicable Diseases,
WHO/SEARO and other senior officials representing Ministry of
Health.
During the meeting,
the concerned Departments apprised the Minister of the preparations
that had been undertaken to prevent SARS cases occurring within
the country. The issues discussed included preparedness to deal
with the problem, infrastructure availability, monitoring mechanisms
available to tackle the issue, exchange of information and facilitating
information flow between key institutions involved in dealing
with the problem.
The decisions
taken at the Meeting included inter alia the following. DGHS would
develop a proforma in consultation with ICMR which would be filled
by the passengers disembarking in India from affected countries.
This would enable the screening of passengers, any person meeting
the criteria of suspected/probable SARS would be reported to Director
NICD and Director EMR. The proforma would be circulated by Ministry
of Home Affairs(Immigration authorities to all concerned airlines.
A recently develop diagnostic kit to tackle the confirmed presence
of SARS virus, if any, probable case is reported would be procured
by DG, ICMR and would be provided to National Institute of Virology,
Pune and National Institute of Communicable Diseases, New Delhi.
The WHO would continuously provide updated information about the
disease to Director General of Health Services. The Ministry of
Home Affairs would issue an advisory on SARS to the Indian Embassy
in affected countries through the Ministry of External Affairs,
so that persons applying for Indian visa are suitably cautioned.
