One crore citizens, one centre, one doctor

India’s first swine flu death, that of 14-year-old Reeda Shaikh in Pune, may have made the people of Mumbai anxious, but health officials still don’t seem to be overly concerned.

Consider this. The city has only one screening centre, at the Kasturba Hospital in Chinchpokli, to fight the disease that has been declared an epidemic in Pune — just about 180 kilometres away. Worse, there is only one doctor manually screening hundreds for symptoms of influenza A H1N1. Incidentally, of the hundreds screened, eight were quarantined and there were four confirmed cases.

A worried crowd thronged the hospital on Wednesday, which was clearly unprepared to tackle so many people and their queries. The lone doctor was manually screening them from 7am till midnight.

There was no relief for the people, because there were no seating arrangements or even ceiling fans in the waiting area. Some patients who were running a  temperature had to stand in queue for hours. Take the case of Kharghar resident Sanjay Patil, who had to travel all the way to Chinchpokli with his ailing daughter Gauri. Doctors had ruled out dengue and malaria. Patil wanted to confirm that it was not a case of swine flu. “They can at least start a few more screening centres, if not treatment centres,” said Patil.

Lack of information amounted to more chaos. Thane resident Archana Gavande came running to Kasturba Hospital with urine and blood samples of her 5-year-old son Gaurav. “We thought we will give his samples and get a swine flu test done,” she said.
Deputy medical superintendent Dr Ravi Kadam, the doctor handling the screening procedure, was not worried about the pressure. “It is an emergency situation and we have to do our best. Duty hours are not important at this point,” he said.  

The president of general practitioners association of Mumbai, Dr Vijay Punjabi, also said that the city ought to have more centres for screening and sample collection. “Even very sick patients are expected to go to Kasturba Hospital and provide their throat swabs,” he said. “There should be at least 5-6 centres in the city.”

In the name of preparedness, the BMC has started a 24/7 helpline from Thursday. “We have also increased the bed strength by adding 12 more beds to the existing 20 beds,” said Dr Umesh Aigal, medical superintendent, Kasturba Hospital. Also, the Haffkine Research Institute at Parel has been asked to stay prepared as they may have to start testing samples soon.      

State health minister Dr Rajendra Shingne however said, “We have identified some private hospitals. Whenever needed we will rope them in.” This is despite the fact that the centre has ruled out using private hospitals for swine flu screening or treatment.