Panicky people throng hospitals

90 pc Swine flu patients don’t need drug: 1242 receive treatment in DMCH
People panicked by swine flu continue to throng different hospitals of the capital seeking remedy. About 1,242 patients were given treatment in Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) till Monday morning.
Though the government has taken initiatives to make the anti-viral drug ‘Oseltamivir’ easily available for the common people, they are apparently deprived of the benefit.
The Government has asked the public hospitals to distribute the capsule free of cost and pharmaceuticals to market it at Tk 150 for each. The drug is sold at Tk 180, revealed a random survey of the city market yesterday.
Health and family Welfare Minister Dr AFM Ruhul Hossain said after a meeting with the pharmaceutical companies under the direct supervision of the Drug administration, civil surgeons and Upazila Nirbahi officers, the pharmacies would be selected for selling the drug. He said 16 districts have been affected by the swine flu which may spread during the Eid festival as large number of people would be leaving for their village home from the city.
The health minister said if any one has at least two to three of the swine flu symptoms, he/she can start taking paracetamol and then anti-viral drug Oseltamivir without even consulting a doctor.
When the attention of a relevant official was drawn regarding marketing of the drug ignoring the government’s decisions, he said the authorities would take stern action against those who would breach the government’s order. He said only a few people would need the anti-viral drug as between 90-95 per cent swine flu infected people recover without any drug. He however, said that drug is required for those who are in critical condition.
Professor Nazrul Islam, virologist and former VC of BSMMU emphasized the need for proper monitoring to prevent misuse of the anti viral drug.
Meanwhile, some patients alleged that they cannot procure the anti-viral drug easily. The attendants of the patients alleged that the on-duty doctors are not available for confirming the attack of swine flu. “We have been waiting for hours, but fail to get attention of doctors”, they said.
The on-duty doctors of DMCH however, claimed that people have nothing to become panicky about swine flu as it is not in pandemic phase.
Swine influenza was first proposed to be a disease related to human influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic, when pigs became sick at the same time as humans, a virologist recalled.
The first identification of an influenza virus as a cause of disease in pigs occurred about ten years later, in 1930, he said.
For the following 60 years, swine influenza strains were almost exclusively H1N1. Then, between 1997 and 2002, new strains of three different subtypes and five different genotypes emerged as causes of influenza among pigs in North America. In 1997-1998, H3N2 strains emerged, the virologist said.
These strains, which include genes derived by re-assortment from human, swine and avian viruses, have become a major cause of swine influenza in North America.
Re-assortment between H1N1 and H3N2 produced H1N2. In 1999 in Canada, a strain of H4N6 crossed the species barrier from birds to pigs, but was contained on a single farm, the virologist said.
The H1N1 viral strain implicated in the 2009 flu pandemic among humans often is called “swine flu” because initial testing showed many of the genes in the virus were similar to influenza viruses normally occurring in North American swine. But further research has shown that the outbreak is due to a new strain of H1N1 not previously reported in pigs, he said.

Courtesy of The New Nation