GIS maps on Covid-19 should be shared among control teams

 By Yohan Perera 

The Geographical Information System( GIS) which maps areas where COVID-19 patients in Sri Lanka should be shared with all disease control teams in order to prevent the pandemic from spreading, a public health expert said yesterday. 

 
 Former Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam told the Daily Mirror that maps were also valuable tools to inform the general public of the locations of the patients so that they could avoid such areas.   

“The GMOA has quite rightly given an ultimatum to the Ministry of Health that it will withdraw from the Technical Committee for Covid-19 control if Geographical Information System (GIS) maps of Covid-19 patient-locations will not be made available. I believe they have understood the valuable inputs such maps can give to the control teams to prevent escalation of this epidemic. The maps are also valuable tools to inform the general public of the locations of the patients so that they can avoid such areas.” Dr. Kariyawasam said. 

“Twenty years ago, realising the value of GIS maps I used them for dengue control in Colombo and it provided great information to plan and implement control measures. We could see clusters of patients and the gradual movement of the cluster into newer areas with time. Maps were used by the Peradeniya University to train Medical Officers in Health mapping. There are some experts in GIS mapping in the Ministry of Health now and they could be used to map the patient locations, their contacts and also put in other information. The Public Health Department of CMC gave GPS training to Public Health Inspectors to send in the information from the location to the GIS centre at the Town Hall. We then prepared the maps and sent them out to the MOHs and also discussed the situation at meetings. They also should put out the maps of present patient locations so that the people in Colombo will also know which areas in the city they should avoid. Colombo city will possibly be the next centre of transmission Covid-19 in the country” Dr. Kariyawasam said.  

GMOA has quite rightly given an ultimatum to the Ministry of Health that it will withdraw from the Technical Committee

“Technology should be used in disease prevention as much as possible but unfortunately the analysed information is hardly available to the people who take decisions and those in the field. This attitude has been in the health sector for decades. I hope that the authorities will seriously take note of this as this is public information that can be used for the greater good of our people and not to be put away in storage as someone’s private property,” 
he added.