The Covid first wave of 2020 and the second wave now have exposed the Municipal Bodies.
The typical Municipal Organization is structured across the Country to only maintain hygiene and cleanliness and of course prompt tax collection -direct and indirect, which they seem to have mastered.
Cleaning, sweeping, waste management has always been their only and primary focus, which they have been doing an inept job anyways.
Public and Community Health is definitely not their focus but the Municipal Bodies are at the Front End for battling Covid across the country.
For the first time starting 2020,the municipal authorities across all the cities are wielding powers and managing such large scale epidemics with zero prior planning, experience, infrastructure or resources.
Little has happened in terms of learning from the 2020 Covid experience and they continue to ‘react’.
A casual look at their website -municipal bodies reveals a lean Organization structure for Health matters and concerns- There is a Medical department,headed by a Joint Commissioner Health ,a Health officer and a few deputies.
Public Health Institutes, part of every State Government do not seem to be playing any role in the management of the pandemic and if they are, they don’t seem to be in the front end.
A search for ‘Covid” in the “National Institute of Epidemiology’ webpage gave zero results. There is just no page,data,matter on Covid ,leave aside a page of basic awareness or precautions for Covid.
With the Covid 19 and its onslaught in 2020, the various Municipal Bodies responded and everyone seemed to be appreciative, since this was a first time experience for all. It appeared that they did a good job. In hindsight, they did not really plan, it was at best, a knee jerk reaction.
They did not learn, they did not scale up the infrastructure, nor did they prepare for the future onslaughts or keep Continued Vigilance and Caution.
We ought to restructure the Muncipal Corporations to fight the next battles, even if it’s a short term measure.
If Municipal Bodies are still going to be the ground force to battle the pandemic, perhaps a good idea to re-structure.
-Privatize the Municipal Bodies-begin with Waste management and City upkeep, allowing the Municipal bodies to focus their energies on the pandemic management and Infrastructure scale up
-Replicate the Mumbai success and get experienced IAS officers and Epidemiologists from CDC to manage
- Restructure the Municipal organization with CDC (Centre for Disease Control) leading in every state with support from the local Public health Institutes
-Reinforce the Municipal Medical Resources-specialist Doctors -community medicine, epidemiologists
To summarize, these pandemics should prompt, prod the Government to re-strategize a long term plan ,set up a Technology and Analytics enabled primary and secondary response system and process that pre-empt’s such crises and not React, but Respond well .
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is at best a research body. Centre for Disease Control should be at the forefront, managing the crisis.
National Centre for Disease Control and Public Health Institutes should ideally play a primary role along with the Municipal Corporations.
The Country’s Chief Epidemiologist, whoever he is, should be given full authority to manage the crisis.
Replicate the success stories of South East Asia -Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand
Sunil Rao
suneilrao@gmail.com
(the writer is an Executive in a Top Tier IT Organisation)
“Opinions expressed are solely my own.any content is not intended to malign any body, person,group,individual,anyone or anything