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India ill-equipped to deal with killer flu: The Times of India
New Delhi, Apr 02: Even as the government claims it is fully prepared to deal with an emergency if the new and lethal strain of killer flu were to come to India, no alert has been sent out to medical practitioners nor are the country`s isolation facilities geared to deal with such infectious organisms.
New Delhi, Apr 02: Even as the government claims it is fully prepared to deal with an emergency if the new and lethal strain of killer flu were to come to India, no alert has been sent out to medical practitioners nor are the country's isolation facilities geared to deal with such infectious organisms.
"There has been no warning, or an alert or a symposium organised to make doctors more aware," says Dr K K Aggarwal of the Indian Medical Association. "By now every pocket of doctors should have been organising seminars to discuss what should be done if they were to get a suspected case," he says.
With 13 countries already in the grip of this new strain of viral pneumonia, known as Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS), there is little room for complacency. "The virus can come here any moment," says a health official. And even though the government is finally gearing up to detect cases at airports and seaports, the hospitals are far from equipped to deal with these cases. Despite government health officials claim that the virus spreads only through sustained contact, international journals point out that the "agent is highly infectious. "In Hong Kong, for instance, there is speculation that it spread to clusters in the ninth floor of a hotel room through infected droplets in the lift lobby.
"We have formed a core group and treatment guidelines have been issued to hospitals," says director of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases Shiv Lal. However, what the Union health ministry does not explain is that the public health infrastructure is not equipped to deal with a crisis, if it were to happen.
For instance, isolating patients suspected of having the disease is crucial to prevent its spread. However, negative pressure isolation rooms, which check the entry of airborne infections, to other parts of the hospital, do not exist in most hospitals here. Doctors say only operation theatres that are doing transplant surgeries are so well equipped. The authoritative British Medical Journal says that unless the route of infection has been clearly established, infection control measures should use such measures.
Most smaller hospitals here do not have ventilators, which could be the only hope of helping an SARS patient. In the event of an outbreak, the few ventilators available in Central government hospitals may be quite inadequate. For instance, the number of ventilators in Lady Hardinge Medical College and hospital is only six, RML has eight while Safdarjung has about 10.
Moreover, most government efforts seem to be concentrated on hospitals in Delhi. Health officials, when asked what was being done to address a possible infection in one of the states, merely said, "letters have been written to chief secretaries of all states."NEW DELHI: Even as the government claims it is fully prepared to deal with an emergency if the new and lethal strain of killer flu were to come to India, no alert has been sent out to medical practitioners nor are the country's isolation facilities geared to deal with such infectious organisms. "There has been no warning, or an alert or a symposium organised to make doctors more aware," says Dr K K Aggarwal of the Indian Medical Association. "By now every pocket of doctors should have been organising seminars to discuss what should be done if they were to get a suspected case," he says.
With 13 countries already in the grip of this new strain of viral pneumonia, known as Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS), there is little room for complacency. "The virus can come here any moment," says a health official. And even though the government is finally gearing up to detect cases at airports and seaports, the hospitals are far from equipped to deal with these cases.
Despite government health officials claim that the virus spreads only through sustained contact, international journals point out that the "agent is highly infectious. "In Hong Kong, for instance, there is speculation that it spread to clusters in the ninth floor of a hotel room through infected droplets in the lift lobby.
With 13 countries already in the grip of this new strain of viral pneumonia, known as Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS), there is little room for complacency. "The virus can come here any moment," says a health official. And even though the government is finally gearing up to detect cases at airports and seaports, the hospitals are far from equipped to deal with these cases. Despite government health officials claim that the virus spreads only through sustained contact, international journals point out that the "agent is highly infectious. "In Hong Kong, for instance, there is speculation that it spread to clusters in the ninth floor of a hotel room through infected droplets in the lift lobby.
"We have formed a core group and treatment guidelines have been issued to hospitals," says director of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases Shiv Lal. However, what the Union health ministry does not explain is that the public health infrastructure is not equipped to deal with a crisis, if it were to happen.
For instance, isolating patients suspected of having the disease is crucial to prevent its spread. However, negative pressure isolation rooms, which check the entry of airborne infections, to other parts of the hospital, do not exist in most hospitals here. Doctors say only operation theatres that are doing transplant surgeries are so well equipped. The authoritative British Medical Journal says that unless the route of infection has been clearly established, infection control measures should use such measures.
Most smaller hospitals here do not have ventilators, which could be the only hope of helping an SARS patient. In the event of an outbreak, the few ventilators available in Central government hospitals may be quite inadequate. For instance, the number of ventilators in Lady Hardinge Medical College and hospital is only six, RML has eight while Safdarjung has about 10.
Moreover, most government efforts seem to be concentrated on hospitals in Delhi. Health officials, when asked what was being done to address a possible infection in one of the states, merely said, "letters have been written to chief secretaries of all states."NEW DELHI: Even as the government claims it is fully prepared to deal with an emergency if the new and lethal strain of killer flu were to come to India, no alert has been sent out to medical practitioners nor are the country's isolation facilities geared to deal with such infectious organisms. "There has been no warning, or an alert or a symposium organised to make doctors more aware," says Dr K K Aggarwal of the Indian Medical Association. "By now every pocket of doctors should have been organising seminars to discuss what should be done if they were to get a suspected case," he says.
With 13 countries already in the grip of this new strain of viral pneumonia, known as Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS), there is little room for complacency. "The virus can come here any moment," says a health official. And even though the government is finally gearing up to detect cases at airports and seaports, the hospitals are far from equipped to deal with these cases.
Despite government health officials claim that the virus spreads only through sustained contact, international journals point out that the "agent is highly infectious. "In Hong Kong, for instance, there is speculation that it spread to clusters in the ninth floor of a hotel room through infected droplets in the lift lobby.