Just as the panic-stricken foreign returned Indians are making a beeline to get themselves admitted in the isolation wards of city hospitals to rule out the possibility of an H1N1 infection, it is the screening system, or the lack of it, at international airports in the country that have come under the scanner.

Some passengers, who spoke to Newsline, said that compared to other countries, where the detection of swine flu among passengers is considered a serious business and is undertaken on an elaborate scale, the same cannot be said of Indian airports.

Dr Nitin Jain narrates his flight experience to China and back. “As the airplane landed at Beijing airport, an announcement asked us to remain on our seats. Four doctors, wearing masks and gloves and equipped with remote sensing temperature recorders, scanned all the passengers. It took about 8 to 9 minutes to scan the whole aircraft. At the airport, several staffers were seen wearing masks and gloves while paramedics and quarantine counters had also been set up. The health information forms that were distributed in the flight had to be submitted at these counters where a thermal imaging camera scanned the person’s body temperature again. Passengers with abnormal temperature were separated and their samples collected.”

He added: “It was, however, a different scene altogether at the IGI airport. After clearing immigration counters, health declaration forms were given to us to be filled. Boredom seemed to be the mood as form after form was stamped without even looking at the passengers. No infrared thermal cameras or other temperature measuring equipment was seen anywhere.”

... contd.