On a sultry afternoon of 31st August, 1854 a British Anesthesiologist took a piece of paper and mapped all the 616 cholera deaths of Soho, London. It all tied up to a single pump by the side of the Broad Street.
Emboldened by his contact mapping, Dr John Snow himself removed the pump handle. From that day Soho was rid of Cholera.
Public health, “the science and art of preventing disease” was born.
Public health is an interdisciplinary field including environmental engineering, safe water supply, occupational safety, community health. There are a lot of civil engineers in our Public Health Departments (PHD). Disease surveillance is part of public health.
Today civil engineers are giving way to data scientist and paper tracing is getting replaced by digital aaps.
When the Public in PH has changed from a handful of villagers suffering from some unknown fever to 7 Billion humans at risk, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence has to replace graph papers and hand notes.
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Public health after Covid.
After 150 years of the first Cholera death mapping by John Snow, today the new avatar of contact tracing is an app- the Arogyasetu app.
GIS mapping has replaced cluster mapping. Disease surveillance has a new meaning. Some examples:
China:
Today, If you enter Sanghai even if you are coming from Beijing, you have to record your travel history at the entrance. Then you are bar coded. So that when you move in to any Public premises, your bar code is read. If it reads green, you are allowed. Not if you read Red.
No wonder, China could stop the Covid clock dot at 82 thousand.
Seoul :
South Korea is known for its quick Control of the Pandemic.
And now Restaurants and Clubs have started re-opening. But you have to select your menu and book your seats by phone in advance. At the entrance, you have to go through a thermal scanner. The hotel service is totally non touch.
In Seoul you may get a text message if any single positive case has visited the super market in your neighborhood and has purchased one Kg rice from counter number 1. That seems to be the heights of Surveillance.
In spite of all this, one club goer has infected 54 people in Seoul just after the reopening. They have tracked all the 200 persons who might have been exposed.
Flights :
Flights in future have to block all the middle seats. But that automatically will inflate the fare by 150%.
GIS Mapping.
Odisha has adopted GIS mapping. In simple words, they are adding location to all our suspects as well as health care resources in a single model
You need a lot of geo referencing to make it public friendly.
But one thing for sure, this Pandemic has upgraded the Public Health from the black board of class room to the digital world of Artificial Intelligence.
Covid is a blessing in disguise to the department of Public Health.
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 