Central team approves location for Metropolitan Surveillance Unit in Pune
After three years of hiccups, the central team of experts has finally approved the location to set up the metropolitan surveillance unit (MSU) in Kasba Peth, Pune. The MSU is a special unit with a laboratory facility aimed at understanding the nature and cause of diseases in an urban context and identifying potential disease outbreaks, officials said.
According to officials, the MSU project in Pune is part of the central government's pilot project under the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) with the latter funding it. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) since 2021 has been unable to provide a dedicated space that meets the required technical specifications of the unit. So much so that the central authorities were considering scrapping the decision to set up an MSU at one point. However, during a visit on May 9, a 5,000 square feet space in Jawale Bhavan, Kasba Peth, was approved for setting up the MSU, officials said.
A senior official from the PMC on request of anonymity revealed that previously, two locations in Baner had been identified but both were rejected as they failed to meet the required technical specifications of the MSU. 'This time, the location was identified only after consultation with and recommendation of the civic building and electrical department due to which it has been approved as prior requirements have been fulfilled. Besides, the central team has agreed to release funds for the unit,' the official said.
For the past three years, the PMC health department has been struggling to provide the ideal location for the MSU and has been sending proposal requests to the central government for fund allocation. Now, both the location and budget proposal of ₹8.28 crore has been approved. The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) commissioner has given approval to the project in December 2024. As per officials, the MSU will identify alerts to be issued for infectious disease outbreaks and provide technical guidance for effective response. Once operational, the MSU will facilitate disease surveillance and prompt action against various disease outbreaks and epidemics.
Furthermore, the PMC has released a public notification in March to hire 24 expert staff for the unit. The scrutiny of applications is underway. The PMC will bear the cost of salaries of the appointed staff. The staff will be appointed within a month and will be trained by the central government, officials said.
PMC to constitute committee to set up lab
The MSU will also have an in-house laboratory of Bio-Safety Level 2 (BSL-2) to test samples for various infectious diseases. The central team has directed the PMC to constitute a technical team of experts that will give technical recommendations to set up the lab.
The technical committee will have experts from the National Institute of Virology, Pune; Sassoon General Hospital; public health department; and microbiology department of the PMC-run medical college among others. The committee will be appointed soon, PMC officials said.
Dr Nina Borade, health chief of the PMC, said that following their request, the central team visited Pune in just three days and the location for the MSU was finalised. 'They have also agreed to release funds for the project and the PCMC too will initially provide around ₹50 lakh for the unit. We have written to the electrical and building department to carry out refurbishment and electrical work at the location,' she said.
Dr Borade further said that during the Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS) outbreak, officials had to struggle to conduct management and containment activities. Apart from these, the analysis and reporting had to be done. 'The MSU is helpful during such a situation and will be a great help in future during similar disease outbreaks,' she said.
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He acknowledged the existence of multiple datasets on heat deaths in India and noted that "none of those alone gives the full picture". "While knowing the actual number of heat deaths is important for policy making, confirming such deaths is difficult even with health ministry guidelines," he added. The official said surveillance systems often capture only a fraction of actual cases for other communicable and non-communicable diseases. "We have some numbers, but never the full picture," he said. One major challenge in data collection is the absence of an electronic record system. "Healthcare facilities still enter data manually. Confirming heat-related deaths is already difficult and manual data entry makes accurate reporting even harder," said another official. Though the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) enables digital submission of surveillance data like that of heat-related deaths, the hospital staff manually enter the information into online forms. There is no automated data transfer from hospital records. Officials also said that while states are mandated to report data, compliance is poor. For example, the hospital staff sometimes omit reporting if temperatures drop due to cloudy weather. A senior doctor from a central government-run hospital in Delhi, speaking anonymously, said most hospitals are understaffed which hampers proper data collection and timely reporting. The doctor also alleged that authorities may suppress death figures to avoid compensation liabilities. At the India Heat Summit 2025 in May, health ministry Advisor Soumya Swaminathan highlighted the weaknesses in the country's death-reporting systems. "I have been saying this since my time at the Indian Council of Medical Research -- death-reporting systems need strengthening because they provide the best source for the government and policymakers to understand causes of death, which should inform policy," she said. Abhiyant Tiwari, Lead for Climate Resilience and Health at NRDC India, said attributing deaths directly to heat remains a global challenge, not just in India. Tiwari, who has contributed to heat action plans at city and district levels, said the all-cause mortality data is more reliable for assessing vulnerability and setting early-warning thresholds, as it captures the total number of deaths during heat events, not only those officially classified as heatstroke deaths. Many heat-related deaths go unrecorded or are misclassified as heart attacks or other causes. By comparing mortality during heatwaves to normal periods, experts estimate that the excess deaths are likely attributable to extreme heat, he said. He stressed the need to improve the reporting of the all-cause mortality data and suggested appointing a single department responsible for its collection and dissemination. As climate change intensifies heatwaves, Avinash Chanchal, deputy programme director at Greenpeace South Asia, called for urgent reforms in how heat-related deaths are recorded. "Discrepancies between departments and widespread underreporting mean the true toll of extreme heat often remains hidden. The government must understand that hiding or ignoring the true numbers delays the urgent action needed to address heat," he said. Until India fixes its fractured data system, the dead will remain just a number or worse, not counted at all, Mr Chanchal said.
