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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Pune in panic, Government to map each victim’s virus trail

Two days after the death of Reeda Sheikh, as another girl from her St Anne’s School, a Class X student, tested positive for the H1N1 virus on Wednesday, the District Collector called an urgent meeting of doctors and told them not to refer “any and every case of seasonal flu” to the already over-stretched Naidu Hospital.

Naidu Hospital and Aundh General Hospital are the two government establishments in the city designated to treat swine flu. Together, these have 50 beds — Naidu that started off with 20 having raised its capacity recently to 40 and Aundh, 10.

But given the panic after Reeda’s death and the number of cases already reported in the city, the government health department announced it will add another 200 beds exclusively for swine flu treatment in the next 15 days.

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