New Delhi: Pandemic preparedness and disease surveillance anchored in strong health systems that reach all people are crucial to ensure better protection from major disease outbreaks, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Tuesday.

Mandaviya laid the foundation stone of the NCDC regional branch in Assam and six state branches in Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal and Mizoram, and BSL-3 labs in Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand virtually from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) here.

Mandaviya said that these regional branches of NCDC will help in combating diseases with regional variations such as Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), Kyasanur forest disease (KFD) and scrub typhus.

Further, state branches of NCDC and BSL-3 laboratory once functional will augment the capacity of region/state for preparedness and response especially for outbreak-prone diseases by high-risk pathogens, he said.

“The health infrastructure facilities inaugurated today, or for those whose foundation stone has been laid, will substantially boost our regional, district and block level healthcare infrastructure and will further augment the surveillance, diagnostics and public health preparedness and response capacity for any impending outbreak or pandemic in future,” he said.

“Pandemic preparedness and disease surveillance anchored in strong health systems that reach all people, especially the most vulnerable, are crucial to ensure better protection from major disease outbreaks,” he said.

Emphasizing that these institutions under NCDC will be in the interest of the local populace, he stated that the government is committed towards strengthening the surveillance of infectious diseases and outbreak response through strengthening of NCDC.

India has performed better than many other countries in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Mandaviya said.

The NCDC has been at the forefront in instituting containment measures, including community surveillance, contact tracing and response in coordination with state and local governments.

He said NCDC is the nodal agency for public health surveillance and response, epidemiological support including outbreak investigations in addition to diagnostic capacities for bacterial, viral, zoonotic infections and parasitic diseases.

“Healthcare professionals and practitioners are like defence forces, they can never be in a complacent mood. They have to always be on alert. There can be no lean period for our healthcare army, we have to strengthen and sharpen our skills for timely surveillance and disease detection,” the minister said.