Topic 1 : Eliminating diseases, one region at a time
Context
The Carter Center, a leader in the global elimination and eradication of diseases, recently reported that guinea worm disease was close to eradication.
About
- The numbers of cases have shown a reduction of 99.99%.
- This would be the second disease after smallpox to be eradicated and the first one with no known medicines or vaccines.
- This has created increased attention to disease elimination, the first step in eradication.
- Ending the epidemics of malaria, tuberculosis and Neglected Tropical Diseases by 2030 is one of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.
On disease elimination, its focus
- Elimination of transmission, which targets achieving zero transmission in a defined region, is different from eradication, which is the permanent cessation of infection by a pathogen with no risk of reintroduction.
- It is a highly desirable objective to enhance the health of the people, especially the poor who are most vulnerable to infectious diseases.
- There are many reasons to recommend disease elimination as a public health strategy.
- As a national goal it energises the public health system.
- The requirements for certification by international agencies are rigorous and preparing for it improves primary health care, diagnostics and surveillance.
- It will lead to increased involvement of field staff and community health workers, enthused by the clearly defined goal, and attract international support.
- But, elimination of transmission is challenging and resource intensive.
- It imposes an onerous load on the system and could lead to the neglect of other important health functions, especially for weak health systems.
- Therefore, disease elimination should be planned only after careful analysis of the costs and benefits and with informed political support to generate the best outcomes with the least adverse impact.
Need for surveillance systems
- The government must be prepared to invest in developing surveillance systems capable of capturing every incidence of the disease, strengthening laboratories for screening and confirmation, ensuring that medicines and consumables are available, and training the workforce on the rigorous requirements of an elimination strategy.
- From this point of view, elimination of many of the diseases targeted by the country may be difficult to achieve for the entire nation within the declared time frame.
- But they are achievable for some diseases in some parts of the country.
- India accounts for 40% of the global case load of lymphatic filariasis, which was targeted for elimination by the World Health Assembly in a resolution in 1997.
- On the other hand, pathogens of some targeted diseases have long incubation periods.
- For them, the strategy of elimination needs to be reworked into a localised and phased one.
- The diseases that can be eliminated easily in defined geographical regions — States, districts, blocks — can be targeted for elimination within those regions.
From the regional level
- Multisectoral collaboration, encouraging innovation and adopting locally effective solutions which facilitate disease elimination, is done more effectively at the regional level.
- While elimination can proceed region wise, national and State governments should own the process.
- Regional implementation needs technical and material support and the progress of regional elimination has to be monitored.
Way forward
In India, national elimination can be achieved most effectively, by starting with elimination and scaling it up, region by region, across the country.
Topic 2 : Data marketplaces: the next frontier
Introduction
The role of digitisation in realising India’s vision of becoming a $5 trillion economy cannot be overstated. As per a NASSCOM report, data and artificial intelligence (AI) can add approximately $450-500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025.
Role of Digitisation
- Rapid digitisation of government operations, however, is accompanied by increasing volumes of citizen data.
- Such data is typically of two kinds — Personal Data i.e., data containing identifiers through which an individual can be mapped; and Non-Personal Data (NPD) i.e., data excluding personal data.
NPD
- NPD constitutes the primary kind of citizen data obtained by the government, which possesses the potential of serving as a ‘public good’.
- To create synergies and devise scalable solutions, integration of NPD in the dispensation of public services is generally being advocated for.
- Application of high value advanced analytics and AI to NPD across key sectors of the economy can help predict socially and economically sound outcomes.
- Junctures where such data-driven insights can better inform governance and public functions are meteorological and disaster forecasts, infrastructure capacity and citizen use-patterns, mobility and housing patterns, and employment trends, to name a few.
- Unfortunately, unlike Personal Data, there is a stark absence of regulation for NPD.
- As of date, efforts have been made at the executive level to construct governance policies for the same.
- The expert committee chaired by Kris Gopalakrishnan in its reports dealt with this at length.
Issues with NPD
- There is a risk of de-anonymisation of NPD, the institutionalisation of a central authority for NPD, and ownership and data sharing mechanisms.
- Subsequently, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) released the National Data Governance Framework Policy (NPD Framework) which was touted as the first building block of the digital architecture being conceived to maximise data-driven governance.
- Notwithstanding, neither of the above mentioned provides for an enforceable regime for NPD in India.
- For this reason, vast reservoirs of NPD stand unregulated and are supported only by limited guidance in dissemination, use, or exchange thereof.
- Data exchanges are scalable ecosystems which galvanise multiple stakeholders. This makes them a fertile ground for deploying advanced analytics for outcome-oriented decision making and helps achieve economies of scale.
Suggestions
- A critical evaluation of the NPD Framework to address the existing gaps will be beneficial.
- This will supplement MeiTY’s effort to regulate NPD and will help forge data exchanges as suitable media to make NPD interoperable across sectors.
- By creating a regulatory design for data exchanges in India, public-welfare functions can be digitised and automated to a large extent.
- This reduces administrative burden, facilitates inter-sectoral integration, builds the safeguards to using/sharing NPD, and makes digitisation of civic functions more participatory in nature.
- In India, the State of Telangana has designed an agriculture data exchange, while India Urban Data Exchange has been established by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science.
- Similarly, the Department of Science & Technology has announced its intention to set up data exchanges to implement aspects of the National Geospatial Policy.
Conclusion
Given the budding interest in data exchange structures, it is crucial to formulate a blueprint for governing them in India. Such examination will be at pace with the global discourse on the regulation of data exchanges and supplement the efforts of MeiTY, the expert committee, and other bodies vis-à-vis governance of NPD in India.