In a bid to cope up with the situation brought up by H1N1 influenza (swine flu), the Director-General of Medical Health, Dr GC Joshi convened a State-level meeting here on Saturday. During the meeting, the State programme officer Dr Kiran Bist and other senior officers were present.
The Health Department has made all arrangements in all hospitals of the State and sent enough medicines as well. To deal with any exigency, a control room which is functional 24x7 has been raised by the Health Department. Now anyone can get information by dialing 0135-2608749.
To monitor this, a rapid response team has been constituted and its name and contact details are being publicised through advertisements in the newspapers. The team is also educating people about how one can be safe from H1N1 virus. They are also helping people to ascertain whether they are infected or not. Now anyone can collect information by dialing the above number.
The programme officer Dr Kiran Bist said that the samples of 64 suspected patients have been sent to National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) for testing. 14 of them have tested found positive. So far only three deaths have occurred due to swine flu in the state. Incidentally, all the deceased were from other states. Talking about one patient who died at Jollygrant Hospital, Dr Bist said that the person was suffering from multiple diseases.