Govt allays fear of Swine flu in India

The clarification came in the wake of reports that a Hyderabad resident had come back from Mexico with flu like symptoms.

“The patient is not showing any symptoms now. In fact he had reported to a nearby health centre for check up after he developed flu like symptoms after coming back from Mexico,” Chaudhary said.

Director,NICD,Shivlal said fresh samples have been taken from the Hyderabad resident and are being flown to Delhi and the results will be available in the next 24 to 48 hours.

The Centre has also decided to increase its Tamiflu stalk from one million to 10 million doses over the next seven days,he said,adding the stockpile would be decentralised all over the country so that any emergency situation can be dealt with quickly.

A total of 50,000 passengers who have come from countries affected by swine flu have been traced and checks would be carried out on them.

Chaudhary said 8 counters have been set up at the Delhi airport and each counter will be manned by one doctor and two nurses.

Meanwhile,the World Health Organisation said on India has “tremendous capacity” to deal with the situation in the event of an outbreak of the influenza.

“India has not reported any case of swine flu. For that matter,none of the South East Asian countries have reported any suspected case,” Dr J P Narain,Director,Communicable Diseases,WHO,South-East Asia region,said.

“They (India) have tremendous capacity to deal with any kind of situation and it is very much in the forefront of preparedness… capacity is very much there… we have absolutely no doubt about that,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

The WHO authorities said situation continues to evolve rapidly and that as of yesterday nine countries have officially reported 148 cases of swine influenza A/H 1N1 infection.

Narain said while Mexico has confirmed 26 human cases of infection,including seven deaths,Canada has reported 13 laboratory confirmed cases,Austria (1),Germany (3),Israel (2),New Zealand (3),Spain (4) and the United Kingdom (5).

Asked whether the WHO was satisfied with India’s response so far,Narain said: “India has surveillance and also the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) and the country followed all the steps.”

He said the IDSP has an “excellent system” of connectivity between districts and states and the country was in the forefront in preparedness.

Responding to a question,he said the WHO regional office has 3 million stockpile of Tamiflu treatments and the world health body’s headquarters has an additional 3.5 million Tamiflu treatments.