India will have to prepare for the next pandemic… Niti Aayog’s report tells about the dangers to come.

New Delhi: Patients lying on the streets for treatment, long queues outside the crematorium, dead bodies floating in rivers, people wandering for oxygen cylinders… Even today, people get goosebumps thinking about this scene of the Covid pandemic. Even after four years, the wounds of the Corona epidemic are fresh. Many families were uprooted during the Covid crisis. The grief of losing their loved ones still haunts the victims’ families. Meanwhile, a report has come out. In this report, health institutions and organizations have been warned to remain active regarding upcoming epidemics.

Big action should be taken on epidemic within 100 days

An expert group constituted by NITI Aayog has recommended setting up a comprehensive framework to effectively deal with future health emergencies or pandemics. This framework, named ‘Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response’ (PPER), recommends creating a new ‘Public Health Emergency Management Act’ (PHEMA) and implementing other measures that will ensure effective response to any pandemic in the first 100 days. To ensure quick and effective response within.

The pandemic crisis has not averted

The expert group constituted in June 2023 made its recommendations based on the experiences and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health crises. A statement issued by the government said, ‘COVID-19 was certainly not the last pandemic and given the unexpectedly changing climate and human-animal-plant activity, new infectious threats may emerge.’ Following are some of the key recommendations made by the expert group in its report, ‘Future Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response: A Framework for Action’, published on September 11.

• First of all PHEMA law will have to be made. Public health emergencies require governments to exercise special powers, such as mandatory testing of people and restrictions on movement.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act (EDA), 1897 and the National Disaster Management Act (NDMA), 2005 were invoked. But the report said that these laws were not completely satisfactory.
• ‘EDA 1897 does not define dangerous, infectious, or contagious diseases, or epidemics,’ the report said. There is no provision for the procedures required for distribution of medicines/vaccines and other preventive steps that need to be taken.’
• Similarly, NDMA was not created to deal with health emergencies. ‘It does not specifically define public health emergencies or pandemics,’ the report said. It focuses on the management of many types of disasters, including natural disasters.
• The report says that these shortcomings can be removed by creating PHEMA. The new law may empower the Central and state governments to effectively deal with not only pandemics, but also other types of health emergencies arising from non-communicable diseases, disasters or bioterrorism.
• Renu Swarup, head of the expert group and former secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, told The Indian Express, “This special provision act will empower public health agencies to take immediate action. This will create trained public health cadre at the national and state levels.
• Another important suggestion is to create a strong panel of secretaries. The report proposes the formation of an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) – a committee of officials chaired by the Cabinet Secretary to prepare for public health emergencies and monitor peacetime preparedness .
• The third important suggestion is to strengthen the monitoring system. The report makes several recommendations to strengthen the disease surveillance network. It noted that over the past 50 years, several pandemics and diseases, including COVID-19, were caused by viruses associated with different bat species. Therefore, continuous monitoring of human-bat contacts was important.
• The report proposes the creation of a national biosecurity and biosecurity network, including major research institutes, biosecurity containment facilities and genome sequencing centres. ‘All components of this system must be strengthened and linked to work in a harmonious, autopilot mode that activates as soon as the first warning signal is detected,’ Swarup said.
• The report also recommends setting up an emergency vaccine bank, which will supply vaccines from within or outside the country.
• The report proposes to create an epidemiological forecasting and modeling network that can predict the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases.
• The report said that diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines can be developed in advance for such priority pathogens identified from the list maintained by the World Health Organization.