House-to-house survey to list patients with comorbidities

Kolkata: State health department will conduct house-to-house surveys to prepare a large-scale database containing details of patients suffering from various ailments, comorbidity factors which will immensely help the department in the future to combat unforeseen situations.

The steps have been taken in view of the Covid infection as comprehensive data would help the Health department to fight any critical battle more convincingly.

The Covid pandemic has thrown up challenges before senior health officials in the state regarding dealing with the situation when the nature of the virus changes due to mutation while transmitting from one patient to another.

The whole idea was new for health experts across the globe. The virus has caused maximum damage to those with comorbidities.

Hence, the Health department has decided to carry out a survey to determine the comorbidities and other health issues in patients that can play a determining factor in case of any such incident in the future.

A senior official of the department said health workers at the Panchayat and block level would be engaged to collect the data from respective houses. Two separate teams would be constituted, each having separate sets of health workers and ASHA workers.

The data will be submitted to the district health department and then the compilation would be done before furnishing it to the Swasthya Bhawan. Tabs would be provided to the health and ASHA workers for the job. They will collect all the information from the households, particularly relating to those who are ill. Trainings are being imparted to them as well in this regard.

A strong database will help the government to address the crisis by creating a pool of ailing patients who require more attention. The new initiative will help the government to navigate through the situation and chalking out the future course of action would be easier, said a senior health department official.

The health department can easily identify those who are more vulnerable in case of any unknown viral attack in future and preventive measures can be taken within a short span of time.

This will also help the department if there is any further wave of Covid. It may be mentioned here that the infection in the state is now on the decline and recovery rate is much higher.