There’s no reason to panic, the health authorities in India tell us. The official figure of confirmed swine flu cases in the country has risen from five to 15 in a week. Swab reports of five suspected cases are awaited. But such isolated cases don’t indicate anything and there isn’t much to be alarmed as long as case clusters are not reported.
Health ministry officials pacify our nerves saying we are in the ‘containment stage’ or lower level of spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, what is bothering public health administrators is the illegal sale and purchase of Tamiflu as an over-the-counter drug in some metro cities. The drug, given free to infected patients at the designated swine flue treatment centres, is being black marketed freely at exorbitant prices. This, more than being an offence, also means people taking the drug out of panic might develop drug resistance to the fast mutating influenza bug. The World Health Organisation has cautioned again self-medication as if might only worsen the situation.
For a guide to swine flu, click here. For India helplines, dial 1075 or 011-23921401.
In this ‘tweeting’ age of fast-paced information overload, why is it so difficult to find an Indian government website that provides updated information on swine flu?
I checked most of the sites within the GOI directory https://goidirectory.nic.in/health.htm including the Ministry of Health and family Welfare. The only place where I could find any information on H1N1 was at WHO-India website https://www.whoindia.org/EN/Index.htm.
So, thanks for providing the phone helpline information. I also saw that the print and online press in India is doing a good job of keeping people informed (and close to panic in case of some organisations).
Sriram: I do agree there’s a lot of coverage on swine flu in the Indian media. And unlike the past coverage of infectious diseases (chikungunya, SARS), I find it more balanced and structured this time.
Though the WHO India website is a good place to look for basic information on swine flu, it doesn’t give you any updates.
The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare site https://mohfw.nic.in/press_releases_on_swine_flu.htm updates press releases more frequently (though the last update as on June 18 morning was of June 16). You might find it useful if you are looking for information on the spread of the disease, new cases or government initiatives.
Till June 17, government sources put the number of swine flu cases in India at 35 — 13 reported from Hyderabad, nine from Delhi, eight from Jalandhar, two each from Mumbai and Coimbatore and one from Goa. Twelve of these have been discharged.
I am back from a packed World Conference of Science Journalists in London where a session discussed the media coverage of swine flu in Europe fairly well.
I am tempted to reproduce some data from the session here.
Mike Grannatt of UK’s communication consultants Luther Pendragon quoted a Eurosurveillance survey, which found 3979 articles across 33 countries between April 27 to May five this year mentioning H1N1.
The coverage was far more than any of the earlier influenza viruses, he says, primarily because governments got much more involved in containing the virus this time. The lessons learnt from H5N1 came handy in managing H1N1.
While 70% of the coverage was factual, 24% was supportive of government actions, 4% criticised national governments and international organisations for not doing enough 2% criticised them for being alarmist.
On the Indian front, 193 people have been tested positive so far, according to government records. About 60 people are still being treated for H1N1 in the country while 133 have been discharged.
And now India has seen the first H1N1 casualty prompting the government to reissue a fresh set of directives. The death of a teenage Pune girl (ironically that’s the city housing the National Institute of Virology which tests H1N1 samples) has thrown up a number of uncomfortable questions for the government — is the public communication to private hospitals and to the masses effective enough to tackle any emergency?
The fresh guidelines say patients with flu-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat and cold should go to a designated government facility for blood tests.
Besides the 18 designated laboratories, some private hospitals across the country will also be allowed to take samples of suspected cases and send them to these laboratories for tests.
Too little too late!
H1N1 has now claimed eight lives in India, five of them in Pune. The health administration seems to be bracing up now to arrest any further spread of the virus. More government hospitals are being opened and private hospitals identified across the country to provide treatment. Shopping malls and cinema halls have been asked to close down for a few days. Self quarantine is being advised. TV channels have roped in resident doctors afresh to get swine flu ‘dos and don’ts’ correct. Safety masks are a common sight. Schools are messaging parents not to send children with flu-like symptoms to schools. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is developing its own kit to make testing cheaper.
It does look like the situation has worsened now and will peak in a matter of days before the virus is finally contained, like all other pandemics eventually are.
And now India is seeing a critical situation with the spread of H1N1 flu. The school kids are not safe. As the government is instructing shopping malls and cinema halls to close for a few weeks why can’t the education ministry also ask the schools to close. By this we can avoid the spread of the flu to children from the school campus.
The official number of swine flu deaths in India has gone beyond the 60s as tempers fly high putting the spotlight on the state governments efficiency over tackling the spread of H1N1.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Angry-Azad-gives-bloody-states-a-tongue-lashing-/articleshow/4921154.cms
Meanwhile, I read an interesting analysis of media coverage of swine flu in India by media watch website The Hoot, which contends that the Indian media has perhaps lost perspective while reporting about the global pandemic:
https://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4035&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=10&valid=true.html
Preventive measures are of utmost importance in controlling the spread of influenza. Below, based on known mechanisms of initiation of infection by the influenza virus (on some of which I have personally worked for several years), I propose that it is essential to investigate a few solutions that could assist in preventing the rapid spread of the H1N1 virus.
Influenza virus infection generally starts with epithelial cells in the respiratory tract of humans. Elucidation of the crystal structure of the surface protein hemagglutinin (HA) of the influenza virus in 19811 has led to great insights into the mechanism of initiating infection by the virus. Note that “H1” refers to type of HA antigen on the viral surface. It is now well established that the influenza infection is initiated by HA-mediated binding of virus particles to target cell surface (containing sialated receptor proteins; sialate refers to sialic acid). This is followed by internalization of the virus by the cell via endocytosis leading to fusion of the viral membrane with the endosomal membrane. The membrane fusion is triggered by the low endosomal pH (5.5 or lower, generally below 5.0 at the subsequent lysozomal stage) leading to irreversible conformational changes in HA that destabilize and then fuse the viral membrane with the endosomal membrane.
Since biological membranes do not fuse spontaneously, the conformational changes in HA discharge energy required to fuse the viral membrane with the cellular membranes leading to release of genetic material of the virus into the host cells.
Experimental and analytical studies have established that the HA molecules on the viral surface, when bound to their receptors, are unable to undergo the conformational changes required to fuse the viral and host cell membranes, for some strains of the virus (see right bottom, Fig. 1). It has also been experimentally shown that simply cross-linking of HA by sialates (or similar molecules) also inhibits the low pH mediated membrane fusion activity of HA on the viral surface. Additional experimental results have established that if the influenza virus is exposed to low pH prior to interaction with target (cell/liposomal) membranes, HA undergoes the irreversible conformational changes that are required for membrane fusion. Thus, even if the overall virus particle structure remains intact on exposure to low pH, the viral particle is “inactivated” in terms of its infectivity since it is unable to deliver the nucleic acid material to cell cytosol in absence of membrane fusion (see Fig. 2). Rather it ends up being another source of food for the cell. This low pH inactivation of HA, rendering influenza viral particles to be non-infectious, has been established for different influenza strains.
The experimentally established findings regarding inhibition of membrane fusion, the primary step in initiation of infection by influenza virus, remain only of academic scientific interest till date. The current (potentially lethal and pandemic) situation demands an immediate exploration of possibilities utilizing the above known findings for preventing spread of the influenza infection. Thus, I wonder if urgent investigations for preventing the spread of H1N1 virus based on the well established inactivation of low pH mediated membrane fusion activity of other strains of the influenza virus are the need of the hour. These can include simple development of masks with an outer lining/covering of material that acquires low pH when in contact with aqueous contents. Current masks have a filtering capacity of only up to a few micrometers of air-borne particles. The influenza virus is only ~ 0.1 to 0.2 micrometers in size. It is the aqueous air-borne droplets containing the virus particles, which are of the sizes of the order of a few micrometers, which are prevented by the current masks from allowing the virus particles to enter the oral/nasal cavities and the respiratory tract. However, the virus particles stuck on these masks are still infectious.
Thus, development of masks with an inner lining that is friendly to the human skin (as with the current masks), but with an outer lining with material that results in a low pH environment when in contact with aqueous droplets would inactivate the virus particles. The low pH can be any value below 5.5 (a pH below which several strains of HA are known to inactivate). These masks could be particularly useful in hospitals, during air travel etc.
100 officially confirmed deaths in India by August-end, of which 55 were in Maharashtra alone and 26 in Karnataka. I also noticed that the health ministry switched over to a tabular, more concise daily report over the last weekend of August, 2009.
All of a sudden, media has stopped giving any information about H1N1. Looks like this is done deliberately to avoid panic.