Focus more on swine flu as it is highly contagious: Azad
November 14th, 2009 - 10:22 pm ICT by IANS
- New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad Saturday said his ministry was focusing on tackling swine flu more than dengue, which had infected 783 people in the national capital, as the former was a “highly contagious” disease.
“Swine flu is a communicable disease whereas dengue is spread by the mosquito bite. Swine flu can spread by the slightest exposure but dengue does not,” Azad told reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of the health pavilion on “Healthy Village-Healthy Nation” at the India International Trade Fair here.
Azad was replying to a question that why the government has set up separate wards in government hospitals to house swine flu affected patients as compared to dengue, where the government is yet to make similar arrangements.
The minister said: “We have funded separate swine flu wards in hospitals because it was highly contagions unlike dengue.”
On Saturday, seven swine flu deaths were reported in the country, taking the total toll due to Influenza A (H1N1) virus to 521.
Of these, three people died in Gujarat, two in Kerala and one each in Maharashtra and Uttarakhand. Also, 154 new cases were reported in the country, taking the total number of people affected with the flu to 15,263.
The first swine flu case was recorded in India May 16, while the first death occured Aug 3.
“This doesn’t imply that we are turning a blind eye to the dengue situation,” Azad was quick to add.
“People need to be aware that they should maintain hygienic conditions and not allow breading of mosquitoes,” he said.
“We have to adopt a separate strategy to tackle the diseases since both are very different. In dengue’s case we need to control the breeding and larvae (of the Aedus mosquito),” he said.
Delhi Saturday recorded 34 new cases of dengue, taking the total number of cases due to the vector-borne disease to 783, health officials said.
Related Stories
- 34 new cases of dengue in capital Saturday - Nov 14, 2009
- 38 new dengue cases in Delhi, total affected 710 - Nov 12, 2009
- 32 new dengue cases take total to 945 in Delhi - Nov 19, 2009
- 29 new dengue cases take Delhi's total to 527 (Lead) - Nov 07, 2009
- Commonwealth Games officials fined for breeding mosquitoes (Lead) - Nov 10, 2009
- 45 new dengue cases in Delhi - Nov 11, 2009
- 29 new dengue cases in Delhi take total to 812 - Nov 15, 2009
- 489 dengue cases recorded in Delhi (Lead) - Nov 06, 2009
- 25 new dengue cases reported in Delhi - Nov 20, 2009
- 42 new dengue cases in Delhi, minister says problem 'massive' (Second Lead) - Nov 10, 2009
- Health
- - communicable disease
- - contagious disease
- - dengue
- - flu deaths
- - ghulam nabi azad
- - government hospitals
- - gujarat
- - health minister
- - health officials
- - hygienic conditions
- - india international
- - larvae
- - maharashtra
- - mosquito bite
- - mosquitoes
- - swine flu
- - turning a blind eye
- - uttarakhand
- - vector borne disease
- - wards
Posted in Health, |
November 15th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I am afraid it is the situation of not letting the virus jump into humans in the first place and everyone appears to miss this point completely. In the tropics and other areas of the world where the killer pandemic virus will no doubt emerge and where it is very cold through the night, farmers sleep with pigs and chickens etc, etc, etc. Therefore as the animals, especially pigs are incubators for most of the possible killer viruses, the farmers are breathing in night-after-night a concoction of air borne viruses and mixing in the human lungs and throat tract. When man becomes infected with human flu, the whole thing is mixing all together for 8 hours on average every night. This is one of the main reasons why avian and swine jump into man. Stop these simple things happening and the virus will have very little chance to spread into humans – you need very close contact for the initial killer virus to become infected into humans in this respect. After that the person infected can easily transmit via chough, sneezes etc, etc to other unsuspecting humans. It is therefore the initial stages that are so vital. The only element therefore needed in many ways, is that we give these millions and millions of farmers, cheap heaters to keep them and their families warm throughout the cold nights. Then they would not sleep with the pigs, chickens et al. Indeed you take the source away from the jump into humans (nightly incubation that goes on every night) and if people know anything about these viruses they will know that they need a mixing vessel where all three viruses exist together. Vaccination of the livestock is also one of the other preventative measures. Put these two together plus other simple methods and the virus can hardly jump or exist in humans as it has not the incubation period to do so – the innovation chain is broken. Indeed, the transmission is extremely low if at all – as the problem is eradicated at source and it never happens.
But again because there are not billions in profits for this field work for pharmaceutical corporations, no one wishes to listen, not even politicians as the drug’s lobby group is so powerful that it strikes all other alternatives down – even if they are the true solution to the problem. It is estimated that all these preventative methods would cost around £50 billion to put in place and which is a very small price to prevent the hundreds of millions that will die once the real killer virus does raise its ugly head (as it will some day) and the financial costs and damage economically to the world are vast; far , far more than £50 billion as the whole system could well collapse.
You will never quicken the lead-time quick enough for any antidote, even if we had an antidote that was safe within 1-month. The reason, the logistics in manufacturing and then distribution would take at least 6 months in the quantities needed (billions of doses) to get to the very first few. For if people did not know also, the 1918 Spanish flu that killed between 20 and 100 million did its worst in the first 6-months of the start of the outbreak. Indeed, from week 16 > Week 26. We have been lucky in the near past that the virus have not been easily transmitted to humans. But when the killer virus does appear that can easily jump into humans, the drugs strategy will be absolutely useless. People should therefore really use their common sense here for their family’s and loved one’s sake and see clearly that this drugs strategy has not a cat in hell’s chance of working when the thing is with us. Then it will definitely be too late for hundreds of millions of people who will inevitably die – it may even be over 1–billion deaths as some people estimate.
I finish by quoting the old adage that ‘Prevention is better than cure and where this has always been the primary consideration of health professionals. This has to be the hallmark statement also to stop the eventual killer virus happening. Why treat the condition when you should never let it start.
Unfortunately we have thrown this well established and primary medical understanding of human health out of the window.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland