Swine flu scare dies quiet death

It Was Not H1N1 But Malaria Which Claimed 200 Lives in 2009 That Was The Biggest Challenge

 
 

Mumbai: Compared to the dread of August, January has been cooler at least with regards to H1N1, the swine-flu-causing virus that had the world worried about its potency. There are no queues in Mumbai’s H1N1 testing centres and barely a handful of patients in the special wards of municipal hospitals. “We have reduced the number of screening centres, we are taking fewer swabs and there is hardly any queue at our hospitals due to H1N1,’’ says a civic official.
    Dr Sujit Rajan feels that the vulnerable population—namely the old, children and people with some chronic condition—would be better off taking precautions against swine flu. Another doctor points out that it would be premature to rule out H1N1 in the city. What civic officials do agree about is that it’s not H1N1 but malaria that was the biggest challenge of 2009. “There was more construction than ever before, it is not surprising that malaria cases were high,’’ says civic executive health officer Dr G T Ambe.
    While H1N1 claimed 30 lives in Mumbai and its extended suburbs, malaria claimed over 200 in 2009. “H1N1 was a major problem for two months. Even at that time we decided that we couldn’t ignore other infectious diseases, be it malaria, leptospirosis or dengue,’’ says Manisha Mhaiskar, additional municipal commissioner of the BMC. Mhaiskar points out to the new malaria where pulse polio drives also carry out malaria surveillance. “We realised in our first joint survey that people who die of malaria mainly hailed from the slums. We tweaked our second round accordingly, and over the last two months, there has been a dip in malaria deaths.’’
    But none of the stakeholders—be it the BMC or the private practitioners— feel that one should completely lower their guard against H1N1. “We cannot relax against a virus that could either mutate and become benign or more virulent.’’
    Worldwide though, a drama is unfolding. The World Health Organisation has announced a review of its response to swine flu, the Council of Europe will debate on ‘false pandemics’ on January 28 and first world countries that had booked millions of vaccines is slashing the order placed with multinational pharmaceutical companies.
    So, was all the hype and scurry for vaccines justified? Says chest physician Dr Ashok Mahasur, “I wouldn’t term the initial reaction as hyper. It was a panic reaction. Later on, things fell into place and people took things in their stride.”