Thiruvananthapuram: A unified Bill dealing with public health was passed in the Kerala assembly on Tuesday. Earlier, there were two laws catering to the needs of public healthcare. One was Travancore -Cochin Public Health Act, 1955 applicable in Travancore-Cochin region. Whereas, the other one was Madras Public Act, 1939 applicable in the Malabar region.
Now, both the laws were merged into one replacing the two old laws. On October 4, 2021, the bill had been published in the Extraordinary Gazette marking as Assembly Bill number 77. The new Bill was tabled in the House on October 27, 2021 and forwarded to the Select Committee for perusal and further consideration on the same day.
Lesson learned from Covid-19 and Nipah virus: The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and Nipah had posed a big problem to deal with the new situation. In the absence of unified law, doctors, paramedics and other frontline workers in the state were groping in the dark.
Now, the new health Act contains detailed rules and regulations how to tackle the pandemic. Social gathering, isolation, quarantine, vaccination and public health infrastructure have been all covered in the new law. The identification of the disease, what should be the treatment procedure to be followed, public health officers' role while reporting the outbreak of such infectious disease, how to conduct check-up of migrant workers have been clearly defined in the new health law.
How check ups to be carried out at regular intervals to contain further spread of the virus, what are the preventive steps should be taken, washing of clothes, how to keep a patient in home isolation as well as livestock/poultry management or domesticated animals staying with humans and several others have been taken into consideration while framing the new law.
