The health ministry recently outlined the new strategies mainly focussing on collecting information on the emerging and re-emerging life-threatening diseases and approaches to tackle them, sources said.

The strategies are sentinel surveillance, institutional surveillance, extended programme of immunisation (EPI) surveillance, priority disease surveillance, outbreak investigation surveillance and routine disease surveillance -- all to be executed under the Directorate of Health Services.

Newly emerging diseases like dengue and nipah first broke out in 1999. The country presently lacks proper facilities to detect such viral attacks, but the new move would enable the existing public health laboratories to gather firsthand information on them.

The first-ever such drive aims at identifying the country's disease patterns, location, mode of transmission and population at risk, and to combat the diseases using modern technology with technical help from World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), a senior official at the health ministry said.

Under the priority disease surveillance strategy, the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) will study and analyse any emergence of 12 known and all unknown diseases. All healthcare providers and facilities will be involved to gather information on the diseases.

Under the outbreak investigation surveillance, the IEDCR will be responsible for detailed investigation and reporting on recently unknown and known diseases.

The IEDCR have selected eight sites to study disease transmission under the sentinel surveillance strategy. These are Kaliakoir, Daudkandi, Potia, Golapganj, Sharsha, Bakerganj, Nilphamari and Shibganj.

Routine disease surveillance will involve collection of data on all diseases reported to upazila health complexes. The director of Management Information System (MIS) will be responsible for outlining the pattern of common diseases.

EPI surveillance would involve data collection on poliomyelitis, tuberculosis (bronchial), diphtheria, pertusis, tetanus and measles. EPI fieldworkers will be engaged mainly in vaccine-related information, like reaction to vaccines, coverage of vaccination and feedback from parents. The EPI programme manager will be responsible for this surveillance.

Under the institutional surveillance, all medical colleges and specialised institutions will be equipped to report on routine diseases and their causes.