Separate wards, staff in Maharashtra private hospitals

As the swine flu toll in India rose to four on Sunday, the central government announced major policy decisions in the battle against the global pandemic.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has asked the government of Maharashtra — where three of the deaths have occurred — to make it mandatory for all major private hospitals to isolate wards and designate and train staff to handle cases of H1N1 infection.

All big hospitals both private and government in Pune, Satara and Mumbai are required, with immediate effect, to assign separate halls or wards and special OPDs for patients suspected to have swine flu.

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Victim went to clinic with cold, may have got virus there: Government

Fourteen-year-old Reeda Shaikh, who on Monday became the country’s first H1N1 casualty, is suspected to have contracted swine flu at a clinic in Pune when she went to a general practitioner (GP) with a usual cough-and-cold complaint in the third week of July.

Before examining Reeda, this GP had attended to a patient who later tested positive for the H1N1 virus, according to a Union Health Ministry team in Pune.

Since Reeda had no history of travel to any flu-affected country nor any known contact diagnosed with the virus, the Ministry team, comprising an epidemiologist and a paediatrician, whittled down the possibilities to zero-in on the clinic visit.

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