Swine flu might spare your life. Government won't

Medical experts describe H1N1 as just another preventable and easily curable form of flu. But one look at the glaring news headlines and you are panic stricken with the reports of an ever increasing death toll. In India already 600 plus people have succumbed to it. The toll statistics of the disease in the past years is alarming and no wonder there is so much panic among the people.

The claims

The government has indicated there is an adequacy of medicines needed to treat swine flu. A 24 hour outbreak monitoring cell of the National Centre of Disease Control is constantly responding to public queries (I didn't know any such thing existed till I read it in The Hindu). The government claims to have announced an alert and has set up taskforce and the states have been asked to educate people.

The reality

My cook, who does not come for work before her daily rituals of devouring morning news bulletins, and regularly reads a Hindi newspaper, informed me that a fever is spreading fast, killing everyone. She was instantly seconded by the gardener who chanced to hear it through the kitchen window. They believed it was a virus let out by Modi sarkar to malign the image of the "jharoowala" chief minister. I was numbed by their ignorance and the government's inability to simulcast such basic information about a simple disease to the masses, forget the taskforce and the helpline which probably exists only on papers.

The government apathy

When masses die in a pandemic which is curable, the onus passes on to the faulty system. Even the deaths of millions in the 1918 influenza epidemic across the world is blamed on aspirin poisoning due to its uncontrolled supply and not on the virus which wilfully chose to kill young, robust hosts, reacting with their healthy immune system (sounds a lot like zombie apocalypse film World War Z, but sadly true). Swine flu has been around since 2009, and that very year PM Manmohan Singh made tall promises to manage the disease, but soon forgot about them. The present government too has shamelessly cut down the health budget by nearly 20 per cent against looming threats of pandemics such as bird flu, swine flu and Ebola.

Personal horror

When my three year old son's one day old temperature failed to respond to the regular antipyretic, I rushed to his paediatrician who assured me it is more likely a case of regular cough and cold and he will be fine in three days time. But when on the third day, the fever still persisted and my otherwise talkative son, grew unusually quiet, I panicked and rushed back to the same doctor. The doctor suspected pneumonia and suggested hospitalisation. When they wheeled him to the intensive care unit, I felt my world collapsing, but I was assured it was only for his speedy recovery. The doctor did not rule out swine flu and put him on medication.

A fellow patient, also a small child, the only son of a widowed mother who was accompanied by no other relative, kept wailing the whole night in pain and anguish. I could see his mother making frantic calls to various government notified swine flu treatment hospitals, requesting for a bed to no avail. She tried her best to linger her stay in this hospital, but they packed her off in an ambulance in the middle of the night. I still wonder, where would she have gone on that chilly night with her sick child, with hospitals refusing admission as they had no vacant seats to offer.

Three more little patients were turned out, the next morning when their swine flu tests came positive. The helpless doctors looked at unease. "It's not that we cannot treat them for swine flu. In fact we are already treating them, and we have both medicine as well as infrastructure, but the government would not allow us," I was told. "As soon as a patient tests swine flu positive, we have to refer them to a government designated hospital."

"But there are no beds available there..." I said.

My heart was beating unusually loud. I did not want to take my child to a dirty government clinic, where he would undergo the same painful process of re-inserting needles in his veins and would be waiting for his turn to be treated on a cold winter night, in an ocean of mismanagement and chaos. Fortunately though, he was not turned out overnight as he was almost cured. (Though we did have to go to Ganga Ram Hospital for a clearance!)

Why can't swine flu management zones can be created in all big hospitals, instead of picking up a handful, causing untold miseries to patients. In swine flu cases, the government is playing Big Brother, forcing sick patients to camp together in cramped centres, pulling them out from their comfort zones. In fact as per a recent report, chief medical officer Pushpa Bishnoi accused hospitals like Medanta and Paras for conducting swine flu tests and administering Tamiflu to patients without government's permission. Do you need to take an official permission to treat a patient?

While it is a good idea to put a cap on the maximum price of swine flu test (which has now been raised to Rs 4,500), it's a bad idea to force every sick patient to get tested in government designated labs, most of which are overburdened anyway, and are unable to meet deadlines in giving results and collecting samples. In my own case, the sample collector was late by almost a day. Such delays can be life threatening for critical patients.

It's true that indiscriminate use of Tamiflu can make the virus resistant, but if not given within 48 hours, the medicine becomes ineffective, so the doctors can't wait for sarkari orders to start treatment if they see a suspected swine flu case.

A country like India that boasts to be a socialist republic, shamelessly allocates just one per cent of its budgetary funds on health care and makes draconian and thoughtless rules for managing diseases. Who says "achhe din aayenge" in a country whose children are forced out of hospitals in the middle of the night because of mindless bureaucratic bottlenecks, which cannot even manage a mere flu case, which is but easily curable!

Here are a few swine flu facts that the government would not let you know:

1. The symptoms include: high fever, chills, fever, body ache, vomiting and diarrhoea also occur sometimes.

2. It is like any other viral and mostly resolves on its own within seven days and you need not visit a hospital if you are able to manage your fever and not feeling unusually unwell.

3. Do visit a doctor if you experience difficulty in breathing and if your child becomes dull as the flu becomes dangerous when it develops into pneumonia.

4. You will not catch swine flu if your immune system is not extremely vulnerable, and even if you do, it's just a flu - so don't worry as the virus is in the air since 2009 and our bodies have more or less adjusted to this strain.

5. Children, elderly, pregnant women, asthmatics and persons with compromised immunity like cancer and heart patients should take extra care, wear N-95 mask while moving out, especially in areas you are likely to get an infection.

6. And lastly, swine flu does not kill if treated on time.