‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan will make society healthy’

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 7

“The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by the Centre in 2014 does not only aim at cleaning up streets, roads and infrastructure of India’s cities, towns, urban and rural areas, but also taking care of overall health of general public so that India has a significant percentage of healthy population,” remarked Dr VM Katoch, former Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, during a national-level conference “BISICON 2019” held recently in Ludhiana.

Dr Katoch was delivering a keynote address during a conference on, ‘Strengthening controlling of GI diseases’ in the context of “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. It was mentioned that Diarrhoeal diseases kill 100,000 children under the age of 11 months in India each year, making this water and food-borne infection the second largest killer of children after pneumonia.

Secretary of the DMCH Managing Society Prem Kumar Gupta said the DMCH had always aimed at educating masses about leading a healthy life and establishing a disease-free society.

Organising secretary of the conference Dr Deepinder Chhina, Professor & Head of Microbiology, said the DMCH had an exclusive ‘Infection Control Committee’ which had been regularly conducting awareness lectures for the public to maintain proper hygiene and follow the five basic steps of hand washing recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).