Things That Bang

I hate to hit the panic button but it seems there should be mandatory checks when people suffer from upper respiratory disorders. The death of a young child in Pune has led to a lot of finger pointing in the medical community. The horse, however, has already left the barn. A child died and if we do not take proper precautions this could become an epidemic of extraordinary proportions unseen since the time of Black Plague and the sole responsibility would lie in the hands of our government.

There should be compulsory checks at airports for those returning from international travel. All hospitals and not only the government ones should have the testing facilities and treatment. In villages too, the hospitals should be well equipped to deal with the flu. NGOs should be hired to work at the grassroots levels.

Children in schools with even common colds should be sent back home with parents being told to get their children tested. Schools in area where flu clusters are found should be closed until the risk subsides. The government should also ensure the antiviral drugs are subsidized to whatever extent needed and high risk categories like pregnant women, the young, etc., are given priority, instead of the usual VIP prioritization.

The Indian government has enacted new guidelines in the wake of Rida's death, like forcible quarantines, and states like Maharashtra, West Bengal have invoked British-era Quarantine Acts. 

The tragic death of young Rida is fundamentally due to the general unpreparedness of the public health system, the government, and society at large to epidemic scale diseases, and the H1N1 Flu in particular. The World Health Organization has been cautioning world governments on the H1N1 pandemic for a while now, and even the additional guidelines issued today by the Indian government fall short of the concerted response needed to address this problem before a dismal worst-case future, with over 2 billion people likely to be infected by the H1N1 flu.