'Officials not providing enough details on H1N1 flu'

In a workshop held on last Thursday jointly by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, WHO and UNICEF recently in New Delhi, journalists voiced their problems over the lack of information about swine flu in the country.

Regional Advisor (Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response), WHO for South East Asia Regional Office Dr Khanchit Limpakarnjanarat said the spreading of H1N1 virus is unstoppable, “unless patients volunteer themselves to get treated”. Special DG (Public Health) and Director of National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) Dr Shiv Lal said the burden of testing hundreds of samples across country will be lessened once the 16 laboratories identified at different locations will start functioning independently. In Karnataka, two labs will be established at Nimhans in Bangalore and Kasturaba Medical College in Manipal.

On patients developing resistance to the antiviral drug Oseltamivir (Tamiflu), Vineet Chawdhry, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said such a situation was yet to arise in India. “If   need occurs, we have the second line of drugs zanamivir (Relenza) which can be administered to the patients”.

At present the antiviral drug (tamiflu) which costs around Rs 25 per tablet is administered to patients tested positive with H1N1 flu.  When asked whether the antiviral drug needs to be taken by health workers as well,  Chawdhry said: “Health workers need not take the antiviral drug, but use proper personal protective equipment while interacting with the suspected and positive patients”.