The state health department has requested all private hospitals and medical personnel to be ready to offer their services to swine flu patients.
The state health department has requested all private hospitals and medical personnel to be ready to offer their services to swine flu patients if government hospitals run out of isolation wards, or if they are asked to do so by the department. Sources said the government has also authorised private hospitals to admit swine flu cases for treatment.
The private hospitals, however, will charge patients for the treatment.
The good news is that almost all private hospitals of the state have responded positively to the government’s appeal. They have agreed to admit patients for treatment if they are found H1N1 positive, provided the patients concerned want to continue to be treated at the same hospital.
The health department had called a high-level meeting of private hospitals and NGOs (including medical associations from across the state) at Gandhinagar on Monday afternoon, to discuss the measures that needed to be taken against swine flu. All private hospitals and NGOs who participated in the meeting agreed to assist the government in its fight against the deadly virus.
Sources said the medical associations who attended the meeting were also asked to spread the word among doctors throughout the state and raise awareness about swine flu. They were asked to inform all district and state-level hospitals to get suspected cases tested for the H1N1 virus.
The government has requested all private hospitals in the state to inform the nearest government hospital if they admitted a suspected case of swine flu. The government hospital would then send a special medical team to collect blood and throat-swab samples of the patient for confirmatory tests. Sources said this would save the patients the trouble of going to another place for the tests.
After the meeting, Dr MR Kanani, president of the Indian Medical Association (Gujarat chapter), said, “We have accepted the state government’s suggestions and we will follow them strictly as they are for the welfare of patients.”
He further said that in the IMA’s news bulletin for the month of June 2009, they had alerted all the 20,000 members of the IMA in the state about the threat posed by swine flu.
Most private hospitals in Ahmedabad city said they are ready with the infrastructure and have created isolation wards for suspected cases of swine flu. “We have isolation wards at our hospital,” said Dr Chandramauli Raval, MD of Sterling Hospital.
“If the government needs our assistance, we are ready to help.” Dr Pankaj Doshi, MD of Shalby Hospital, said they were keen to assist the government in the fight against swine flu. “We will provide ventilators to government hospitals if they need it,” he said.
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