The Government of Puducherry and Abbott, a healthcare company in India, have signed a three-year agreement to improve awareness of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidaemia (cholesterol related disorders) and thyroid disorders; and implement initiatives to fight them and record their prevalence in the Union Territory of Puducherry.
The partnership programme will reach out to the Union Territory’s citizens and screen/monitor over seven lakh people, which is the general population of Puducherry who are thirty years or above. It will also build the skills of local healthcare providers through continued medical education.
This partnership is initiated in India to capture and assess reliable population level screening/monitoring data. The collected data will help to create health risk maps to forecast the burden of these non-communicable diseases, facilitate early intervention, and ultimately help reduce disease burden in the Union Territory of Puducherry.
The Government of Puducherry will provide the infrastructure and the necessary permissions and logistical arrangements in the Union Territory to run the project, while Abbott will provide subsidised diagnostics, educational support to healthcare providers, patient awareness material and will conduct diet guidance camps. Abbott will also provide NCD management kits (including supplies to measure blood pressure, body mass index and blood glucose) and 150,000 glucose test strips free of cost to support monitoring of diabetes, as well as access to a unique internationally-recognised, evidence-based disease risk and health assessment tool.
The health assessment tool will help the Government of Puducherry’s healthcare providers to assess each individual’s health risks and support the public health ecosystem to create a personalised care plan to drive better health outcomes for patients and increase the focus of preventive care. The assessment of population-level data of diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol and thyroid disorders will project the likely disease pattern over a period of three years, thereby enabling a targeted approach to reduce the Union Territory’s disease burden.
N Rangaswamy, Chief Minister, Puducherry said, “The partnership with Abbott is one of the first in the country for a state or Union Territory to build awareness, provide treatment and better manage chronic diseases for its citizens, using its existing public health infrastructure. This partnership will not only improve patient outcomes, but also help address the growing disease burden and the associated economic burden of Puducherry.”
Vivek Mohan, Senior Director, Global Integrated Health, Abbott said, “Partnerships like these with government will help to prevent and manage these diseases effectively, in particular by strengthening the health care systems addressing NCDs.”
EH News Bureau