The district health department took six more samples of suspected swine flu patients on Monday. The department has collected samples of 145 suspected patients till date. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun Dr S P Agarwal informed The Pioneer that samples of six suspected patients were sent to National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) New Delhi on Monday.
He said that 12 cases of swine flu are reported in the district till date with death of one patient. Dr Agarwal said that the district has adequate quantity of medicines and other protective equipments. He said that all the hospitals and doctors are asked to immediately inform the suspected cases to the district health department. The CMO said that said that there is no need of panic on swine flu.
He advised that people should practice personal hygiene to prevent infection from spreading. The health department is facing problems due to delay in arrival of reports of swine flu tests from Delhi. The NCDC located at New Delhi is overflowing with samples of swine flu. The NCDC is taking unusually more time to send the reports of suspected cases of Uttarakhand.
The doctors however do not wait for the swine flu report to start treatment of disease. The department has listed three categories based on symptoms to the physicians and they start course of Tamiflu for swine flu. It is worth mentioning here that the death toll in form swine flu in the country has crossed 1000 figure mark on Sunday. The number of swine flu positive cases in the country has scaled to 20000.
The current spell of rains has reduced the temperatures considerably due to which the number of people affected by the disease is expected to increase in the state . The virus of swine flu multiplies in the cold weather and the prevailing weather condition is conducive for spread of the disease.