Swine flu again

It is unclear whether Tamiflu vaccine is sufficient for the sufficient for the inoculation of the wider population.

It is a bad week for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) in terms of health concerns. For the first time in three years, a case of swine flu has been detected in Karak district. Swine flu is a highly contagious, acute respiratory disease that is spread human-to-human by droplet infection or by touching an infected surface and then transporting the virus to the mouth or nose. The patient, who has been diagnosed with the disease, is being treated in the isolation ward of the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and is expected to be there for two weeks. A professor at KTH has said that the standard treatment for swine flu, the Tamiflu vaccine antiviral drug effective against the H1N1 strain, was available in sufficient quantities in all government-run hospitals. It should also be noted that on February 11, the first polio case in K-P for this year was confirmed, bringing the national total to 11 so far in 2014.

Flu is a seasonal illness and regularly kills many worldwide every year, but the H1N1 virus is particularly dangerous for certain categories. Children aged up to five years, women who are pregnant in the flu season, the morbidly obese, those suffering from diabetes, those with a pre-existing pulmonary condition and the household contacts of caregivers to children aged younger than five — are all at enhanced risk. It is not difficult to lay these vectors over Pakistan to understand the risks and the very real concerns of health professionals about this outbreak of swine flu. It is to be hoped that it is contained. The stocks of Tamiflu are said to be ‘sufficient’, but it is unclear whether they are sufficient for the treatment of those infected or sufficient for the inoculation of the wider population, with the former more likely than the latter. In broad terms, the population of Pakistan suffers from chronically poor health and we need to start making all efforts to ensure that this does not remain the case and illnesses such as swine flu do not spread further.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th,  2014.

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