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diseases continue to inflict humankind. As the world battles ‘arch enemies’ like AIDS and
cancers, newer foes like SARS, anthrax, West Nile, avian influenza, etc. have been raising
their ugly heads (some being deadly bio-terrorism tools!).Even chronic ailments related to
heart, metabolism, etc, and behavioural, neurological and psychological disorders are major
health issues that concern all nations, whether developed or developing. In response, action
needs to be taken. But here, the health of populations at large is in question, and thus,
service of ‘individual-centric’ doctors is limited. It calls for an elite band of ‘population-
centric’ professionals called epidemiologists.
THE THING
The west is relatively disease free due to work of epidemiologists. As an example, Shailee
Tanna, a Canadian medical student, informs, “In Canada, aside from research, resources and
money have been invested in studying
and developing prevention and control programs for diseases such as the West Nile disease
and the SARS. Due to this, SARS has been effectively controlled since after the epidemic in
2003, and so has the West Nile virus.”
Î Occupational/Environmental Diseases
Î School Health
FOCUS INDIA
In India, there is a shortage of field trained epidemiologists in the public health system. It is
estimated that the country requires minimum of 1000 trained epidemiologists (one per
district). Shruti Priya, faculty at Institute of Science, Mumbai, observes, “In India,
epidemiology is still in a developing stage and needs lots of efforts to get ahead.”
However, the demand for trained epidemiologists is increasing with the Integrated Disease
Surveillance Project being implemented in the country.
SCOPE AND TRAINING
TRAINING INSTITUTES
(indicative listing)
An epidemiologist should have good logical and analytical faculties. He must be ready to
work in rural areas and be able to travel extensively.
VIEWPOINTS
Dr Vivek Gupta, MD, is a senior resident at Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS, New
Delhi. In attempt to reduce the lackluster attitude towards epidemiology, he says, “There is
an urgent need to improve the level of exposure our graduates have to
epidemiology. The science of epidemiology does not need the knowledge of
medicine. There are numerous fields such as nutritional epidemiology,
environmental epidemiology, social epidemiology, etc that are open to
students from diverse fields such as sociology, dietics, statistics,
microbiology etc. I see it as an up and coming field and as a good career
path for our younger generation.” Epidemiology is a vast topic and there is more to it that
can be put on paper. In a nutshell, global initiatives to improve public health ensure that
epidemiologists are here to stay.
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