Government of India Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) Department of Health & Family Welfare
Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) - Government of India
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SHOC

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Strategic Health Operations Centre(SHOC)

Goal: To provide single point contact facility for emergency management.

“To provide a facility for an emergency team, to manage information & resources for disease surveillance and outbreak response and key decision makers to operate in the event of an emergency situation, disease outbreak or crisis of any nature.”

 

Approved by MoHFW in 2007, EOI’s advertised twice in 2008– No eligible bidder, Contract award for Establishment of SHOC in 2012, SHOC Installed– in 2013, SHOC is intended to act as the physical location at which the coordination of information and resources to support incident management/response activities normally takes place. SHOC is fitted with state of art information technology gadgets with video/audio conference facility, capable of transferring data, audio and video at high speed, real-time information exchange, operations planning and virtual networking etc.

 

Objective:

  1. Act as a command center to manage disease outbreaks, public health emergencies or any disaster situation.
  2. Strengthening disease surveillance & response using the latest information & communication technology.
  3. Strengthening disease surveillance and response.

 

Activities:

  1. Surveillance activities monitored with various sites concurrently
    1. Monitoring disease distribution and trends
  2. Prompt dataanalysisfordecision making
    1. Rapid data sharing and transmission
    2. Develop the strategy and action plan
    3. Mobilize support
    4. Provide feedback
  3. Technical consultation, through video conferencing 
  1. Disease outbreak /public health emergency response by acting as command centre.
  2. Distance Learning and capacity building through Video Conferencing.

 

Flow of Information:

  1. OMC/EWS, Media Scanning and Verification cell, weekly reports etc…
  2. Status evaluation by SHOC I/C
  3. Preliminary assessment team(PAT) meeting, recommendation to Director, NCDC (within 120 min)
  4. SHOC activated, Incident Log opened 
  5. SOPs implemented using checklists
  6. Tasks assigned according to plan
  7. Resource allocation (tracked in log)
  8. Task performance (tracked in log)
  9. Status briefings and updates to stakeholders

 

When to activate SHOC

  • Any upsurge observed through the above mechanisms then a Preliminary Assessment Team (PAT) meeting is called comprising of all HODs and the PAT committee recommends to Director, NCDC to activate Strategic Health Operation Center (SHOC) 24X7 till the situation is under control.
  • The Director, NCDC will determine whether there will be SHOC activation.

Triggering events include:

    • Epidemic Prone Infectious Disease Outbreak
    • Multi-Division involvement
    • Overwhelms the capacity of the Outbreak Monitoring Cell
    • An outbreak involving multiple States/UTs
    • Request from MoHF&W
    • Potential PHEIC
    • High Media profile
    • Request from the States/UT, other ministries

Activation Triggers:

 

The key distinctions in activation level designations are:

  • Level I – The lowest level of activation. Activation at this level is eight hours a day for seven days.
  • Level II –When the involvement of more than one division of NCDC or an external stakeholder is required. Activation at level two is 14 hours per day for seven days (i.e. 8am to 10 pm).
  • Level III – The highest level of activation, this level is reserved for the largest scale responses which require an agency-wide 24/7 effort.

 

Activities

  • NCDC Staff identified for response through SHOC undergone online trainings of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), USA on Incident Response Systems.
  • SHOC was activated thrice in year 2015 once in 2016 and once in 2017 which is still active. 
    1. Influenza A H1N1 outbreak                                            – 26 Feb to 13 April 2015
    2. AES outbreak                                                               – 25 May to 3 July 2015
    3. Influenza A H1N1 outbreak & flood situation                   – 11 Aug to 30 Oct 2015
    4. Simhastha kumbh, Ujjain & Heat waves related activities - 22 Apr to 10 June 2016
    5. H1N1 activities                                                             -23 Feb 2017 to 12 Mar 2018

Deliverables of SHOC during of activation of H1N1:

  • Collection & compilation of H1N1 reports from all 36 states & UTs
  • Analyze the daily information related to H1N1 cases and deaths
  • Prepare charts & graphs to keep a track of the situation
  • To respond to any request for information
  • To assist any teams deployed in the states
  • To assist the 24 X 7 call centre at NCDC
  • Any other task as assigned by the Incident Manager / Director