Important Facts For Prelims
National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)
- 25 Mar 2020
- 2 min read
Why in News
Recently, the Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare visited the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Control Room to review the current status of COVID-19.
Key Points
- The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), formerly National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), had its origin as the Central Malaria Bureau, established at Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1909.
- NICD was transformed into the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) with a larger mandate of controlling emerging and re-emerging diseases in 2009.
- It functions as the nodal agency in the country for disease surveillance facilitating prevention and control of communicable diseases.
- It is also a national level institute for training specialized manpower for public health, laboratory sciences and entomological services and is involved in various applied research activities.
- Major Functions
- Undertakes investigations of disease outbreaks all over the country.
- Provides referral diagnostic services to individuals, community, medical colleges, research institutions and state health directorates.
- Engaged in generation and dissemination of knowledge in various areas like Epidemiology, Surveillance, and Laboratories etc.
- Applied integrated research in various aspects of communicable as well as some aspects of non-communicable diseases has been one of the prime functions of the Institute.
- The Institute is under administrative control of the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
- The Institute has its headquarters in Delhi.
