THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Climate change has led to diseases like dengue surging across the country and remaining active for almost six months in a year, Manisha Bhinge, Managing Director, The Rockefeller Foundation (Programmes, Health Initiative) has said. She added that seasonality of dengue has changed from what used to be, from a window period of two to three months, to almost six months and that is directly related to the change in micro climates across the country.
Speaking to TNIE on the sidelines of the first G20 India Health Working Group (HWG) meeting being held here, she said that climate change has aggravated various infectious diseases and advanced technologies along with capabilities are needed for the health system to respond to the challenge effectively.
She warned that climate change would transform many disease profiles and added that research carried out in major cities in India have validated the point.
On Covid, Bhinge said the Union government was very "vigilant" and was adopting the "right approach". She added that there is a constant effort on the part of the government to understand prevalence and dynamics of the disease. "After the Delta wave, it is very unlikely that we will be complacent. The resumption of testing on travellers from East Asia was one of the right approaches adopted against Covid recently," she said.
Bhinge said the world was at a cusp in terms of a "21st century approach" to public health. Such an approach thinks about public health officials as "consumers of science and evidence" for policy- making. The role of digital technology would be at the forefront of the new approach and the HWG meeting has discussed it exhaustively, she said.
"While going digital, privacy protection of individuals remains paramount. There should be a balance between creating innovative products in the health sector that require large volumes of data but at the same time protect personal data from misuse," she said.
Bhinge said The Rockefeller Foundation is currently funding top research institutions in the country to build in-country capacity for genomic sequencing to identify infectious disease pathogens.