‘Ill-equipped’ govt hospitals get swine flu medicine

Around 35,000 Tamiflu tablets would be supplied to at least seven large hospitals run by the Sindh and city governments within a couple of days. — File Photo

KARACHI: Senior health officials working amid a swine flu alarm in the city have put their faith in antiviral medicines being provided to them, ignoring their health facilities’ lack of capacity for a fully-fledged treatment of patients reporting with a severe infection of the H1N1 virus. 

nfection of the H1N1 virus. 

Sources added that 35,000 Tamiflu tablets would be supplied to at least seven large hospitals run by the Sindh and city governments within a couple of days. However, the preparation of isolation wards in public sector hospitals for treatment and management of patients complaining of severe respiratory problems and chest infections would not be done anytime soon.

These hospitals would not be able to establish such wards with ventilators required exclusively for swine flu treatment.

The federal health ministry’s Director-General Dr Rasheed A. Jooma told Dawn on Friday that the swine flu death toll in the country had risen to eight. The deaths have been reported from Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Faisalabad, according to him. The National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad, he said, had informed him that 37 persons were positive among the 190 tested for swine flu so far.

Pointing out that there had been a rise in swine flu cases being reported in Karachi, he insisted that the virus had been carried by someone coming from abroad.

The focal person on swine flu for Sindh, Dr Shakeel A. Mullick, said that the NIH had so far confirmed five swine flu cases in the province. Four of the patients had already tested positive by the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) laboratory while the other one was deported from Oman and quarantined at the federal health ministry facility near Karachi airport.