India, July 24 -- There is enough evidence to show thatNational Centre for Disease Control on diseases is not equipped to deal with the country's disease burden

India's premier organisation mandated to collect data about diseases from each village of the country is failing in its task even as the spread of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues unabated.

The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) carries out disease surveillance through its Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP). This programme has been present in the country in different avatars since 1997, when the National Surveillance Programme for Communicable Diseases was set up.

This was upscaled to Integrated Disease Surveillance Project in 2004, with the ...