Chandigarh : The Hon’ble Supreme Court has imposed an interim ban on endosulfan use and manufacture in India, and asked the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to generate data through nationwide study/s on the potential toxicity and health hazards associated with endosulfan exposure. Very few studies are available in India and there is no systematic correlation studies on health effect of pesticides and their metabolites in general population. Therefore it is very important that a carefully planned study for generating a reliable database on the level of pesticides and their metabolites in general population In this regard, a task force project has been developed identifying PGIMER, Chandigarh as the Technical Coordinating Center (TCC). Professor JS Thakur, from School of Public Health (SPH) PGI Chandigarh is the head of the Technical coordinator Center of this Multi Centric Study, The objectives of the TCC are namely; developing tools, capacity building, monitoring and quality control, analyzing the collected data, report writing, dissemination and providing recommendations.
The study will be carried out in 5 states, which were selected on the basis of the highest consumption of pesticides per hectare. These are Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. The study will be implemented through partner medical colleges/ institutes identified from each state as implementing agencies. These are Amritsar medical college for Punjab, PGIMER, Chandigarh for Haryana, King George Medical University, Lucknow for Uttar Pradesh, Seth GS Medical College, Mumbai for Maharastar and Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad for Andhra Pradesh.
A workshop in the School of Public Health (CPH) is being organized from 30 July to 31 July, 2018 on pesticide exposure and health effects for training of investigators A total 30participants, including Investigators, Faculty and key stakeholders from different departments will be participating including Dr RS Dhaliwal, Chief NCD, ICMR, Dr Geetika Yadav, Scientist D, ICMR, Prof. P Seth, Chair Task Force, ICMR, and various faculty members from PGIMER.. Training would help to train their respective field investigators for standardized data collection and biological sample collection at respective states. On the first day the workshop will start with the sessions based on the information about pesticides exposure and health effects. The day will proceed with the discussion of various tools like questionnaire, various SOPs and presentations from all participating centres along with TCC. The workshop will be inaugurated by Chief Guest Professor Arvind Rajwanshi, Dean Research, PGIMER on 30th July, On the second day –of the workshop, the participants will have a field visit to nearby villages of Punjab and will make their implementation plan. Later on that day there will a panel discussion on monitoring and mitigation measures of pesticides exposure, financial aspects related to this study will be discussed.
The expected outcome of this training will be capacity building of the investigators of the participating centers pertaining to data collection, data monitoring and analysis for entire study period, quality assurance of the data collection and management.