Report Writing on The Current COVID-19
Answers
On 11 March 2020, WHO declared Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic and reiterated the call for countries to take immediate actions and scale up response to treat, detect and reduce transmission to save people’s lives.
Speaking to WHO personnel who are based in all states/UTs in India, via video conference in April 2020, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare said, “WHO is an important partner in our fight against the COVID-19. I really value guidance and contributions made by the WHO in containing spread of COVID-19 across the country.
The WHO Country Office for India (WCO India) has been working closely with the Government of India (GoI) to step-up preparedness and response measures for COVID-19, including surveillance and contact tracing, laboratory testing, risk communications and community engagement, hospital preparedness, infection prevention and control, and implementation of containment plan at all three levels of the health system – national, state and district. The entire field presence, including the National Public Health Surveillance Project, consisting of more than 2000 personnel has been fully re-purposed to support the government to overcome this challenge.
At the national level, WCO India is providing technical support to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) through the Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) and working closely with National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National Disaster Management Authority and NITI Aayog. WHO teams are also supporting National and State Governments in ensuring essential health services such as immunisation, reproductive maternal newborn child and adolescent health (RMNCAH), non-communicable diseases and priority communicable diseases are available