No Swine Flu case found in India: Govt
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
New Delhi, May 1, IRNA – Indian government has said that not a single suspected case of Swine Flu has been detected in India and there is absolutely no need to panic.
While assuring that there was no suspected case of the disease in the country as of now, Vineet Chaudhary, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Health, while briefing media in New Delhi said: "Over the last one week or so, 50 thousand people have come to India from the countries where the cases of infection of Swine Flu have been reported and the government will be tracking them to find out whether they are showing any symptoms specially those who have come from Mexico".
The clarification came in the wake of reports that a Hyderabad resident had come back from Mexico with flu like symptoms.
"The patient is not showing any symptoms now. In fact he had reported to a nearby health centre for check up after he developed flu like symptoms after coming back from Mexico," Chaudhary said.
Meanwhile, the Centre has also decided to increase its Tamiflu stalk from one million to 10 million doses over the next seven days, he said, adding the stockpile would be decentralised all over the country so that any emergency situation can be dealt with quickly.
Keeping in view the global scenario, Government of India has instituted a series of preventive actions that include surveillance at Ports and International Airports, Surveillance through Integrated Disease Surveillance units in the States and travel advisory for those traveling to the affected areas to defer non essential travel.
Health screening of passengers has been started at International airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Meanwhile, World Health Organization has reported human cases of Swine Influenza A [H1N1] caused by a re-assorted Swine flu virus.
As on 29th April, 2009 nine countries have officially reported 148 cases of swine influenza A/H1N1 infection with 8 deaths.
USA has reported 91 laboratory confirmed human cases, with one death and Mexico reported 26 cases including seven deaths.
The other countries which have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths are: Austria (1), Canada (13), Germany (3), Israel (2), New Zealand (3), Spain (4) and the United Kingdom (5).
"India has not reported any case of swine flu. For that matter, none of the South East Asian countries have reported any suspected case," Dr J P Narain, Director, Communicable Diseases, WHO, South-East Asia region, said.
"They (India) have tremendous capacity to deal with any kind of situation and it is very much in the forefront of prepardeness... capacity is very much there... we have absolutely no doubt about that," he told reporters.
Swine influenza is known to be caused by influenza A subtypes H1N1,[4] H1N2,[4] H3N1,[5] H3N2,[4] and H2N3.
It infects people every year and is found typically in those who have been in contact with pigs, although there have been cases of person-to-person transmission.
Its symptoms include fever, disorientation, stiffness of the joints, vomiting and loss of consciousness leading to death.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
