Swine flu: Health experts assess situation

AHMEDABAD: A three-member team of health experts from Delhi is on a three-day visit to Ahmedabad and Rajkot—the cities worst affected by the swine flu outbreak in the state. The team will submit a report on Thursday to the state government and the media, about their assessment of the preparedness and the swine flu situation in the state.

The swine flu assessment comes 22 days ahead of a crucial Japan-India conclave which is scheduled to take place in Ahmedabad, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe will sign crucial bilateral agreements and attend the ground breaking of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project.

The three-member team consists of the head of the microbiology department of AIIMS, Dr Lalit Dar; senior

CMO

of the department of respiratory medicine, Safdarjung Hospital Dr Deepak Bhattacharya and deputy director (epidemology) NCDC, Delhi, Dr Shankar Kulkarni. It was accompanied by

Gujarat

NHM director Dr Gaurav Dahiya.

Speaking on behalf of the central team, Dr Dahiya said, “The team will conduct death audits of a few patients, analyse administering of oseltamivir tablets, awareness activities, door-to-door surveillance, maintenance of swine flu isolation wards and diagnostic labs conducting swine flu tests. The team will also suggest measures to make treatment effective and arrest further spread of the disease in the upcoming H1N1 cycle after the monsoons.” The team also visited the Viratnagar urban health centre and the family of a victim of swine flu to assess how cases are managed and how health workers take samples of suspected patients. Dr Dahiya claimed that intensive surveillance was on at taluka level. When asked why the central team visited Gujarat and not other states like Maharashtra, which has the maximum number of swine flu cases, Dr Dahiya said, “I won’t be able to comment on the issue.” About why active surveillance was not undertaken from February to April, when patients were dying of the disease in Ahmedabad and Rajkot, Dahiya said, “We were doing passive surveillance.”