Parents can now expect planned long-term health management for their children. The Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) are starting a surveillance project to track childhood diseases that can be prevented through vaccinations. The Infectious Disease Surveillance project will serve as a platform for paediatricians across India to report cases of children diagnosed with diseases such as pneumonia, chicken pox, mumps and dengue.

"It will help us to generate data on the spread of a disease and also help us to analyse the impact of existing vaccines on reducing the spread of a disease," said Dr Vijay Yewale, paediatrician and convener, IAP committee on immunisation. "For instance, there are vaccines for measles and pertussis - a highly contagious bacterial disease. Through the surveillance model, we can analyse the impact of the vaccine on reducing these diseases."

The project will target 9 diseases. The doctors can report cases either by logging onto the official website, sending an SMS or by calling up the integrated voice recognition system. It can help collect data on immunisation status of the patients. The reporting paediatrician will be sent a report on the cases reported by him on every week.

"Earlier, it was not possible to do the epidemiological analysis of these diseases," said Yewale.

The project served as an alert when it reported more than 70 measles cases in Gandhi Dham in Gujarat, a month ago.

"The data alerted the health authorities and culminated into a door-to-door survey," said Dr Naveen Thacker, a paediatrician.