No screening at railway stations in Bangalore

In emergency, patients can be rushed to Railway Hospital

However, the railway stations in the City do not reveal any symptoms that the dreaded disease is chugging along. Officials also claim that there has been no impact on train travel on account of it. With 92 pairs of trains criss-crossing the City station on a daily basis, nearly two lakh people pass through it. If at all, there needs to be one spot in Bangalore where some kind of screening has to be done to identify those carrying the dreaded H1N1 virus into the City or away from it, this has to be the point. To state that the medical facilities here are woefully inadequate is a gross understatement. There is absolutely no screening in place either at City station, Cantonment or Yeshwantpur railway stations, say railway sources. The City station is better positioned compared to the other stations.  In case of any emergency, patients can be rushed to the Railway Hospital, available in the railway quarters, very near the station.  However, even this 45-bed hospital is not well-equipped with medicine stocks or even masks.

There has been no communication from the headquarters about the steps to be taken so far and the decisions have to be made there, says a health source. Officials here claim that they have not encountered any incidence of swine flu so far.

“However, If we happen to encounter anyone showing symptoms of carrying the H1N1 virus, we will be directing them to any of the government or private hospitals in the City, which have been designated by the government to handle it,” an official said.

Fear psychosis

Meanwhile, a top official said that he did not notice any spate of cancellation of tickets due to the fear psychosis spread by the disease. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s Chief Regional Manager S Gagarin said that generally 20% of booked tickets get cancelled and the same trend prevailed even the last two weeks.

Another source said that it would be difficult to relate any kind of cancellation to the disease as the customer is not expected to provide any reason when cancelling tickets.