With the number of people infected with swine flu in Bihar rising up to 13, the Bihar Government on Friday claimed sufficient medicine has reached the State capital to tackle the deadly virus, which has so far, accounted for over 900 deaths in the country. Lack of basic infrastructure and non-availability of medicines, however, has a different tale from the districts from where reports of people infected with H1N1 virus has started coming in.
“Out of 64 suspected swine flu cases testes of 13 have been found positive so far but we’ve received sufficient number of Tamiflu tablets and will be getting 20 thousand more from Hyderabad on Saturday to tackle the viral disease,” Brajesh Mehrotra, principal secretary, health department said.
Several steps
He also said that State Government has taken several steps to check swine flu Like putting banners at railway stations and making regular public announcements about the disease. “Several isolation wards have been made with numbers of beds at the government hospitals and cleanliness drive has been initiated at the required places,” he declared further.
Alert issued
The State health minister Ramdhani Singh said an alert has been issued and officials have been asked to take measures to treat swine flu patients on priority basis. No swine flu death, though, has been reported from the State yet.
Earlier, with the swine flu reports started coming in from the State, chief minister Nitish Kumar had urged the Centre to include Bihar also in the list of states affected by swine flu and make available required medicines and vaccines for treatment. The Centre on Friday sent 5000 Tamiflu tablets, personal protection equipments (PPE) and viral transportation media (VTM) to Bihar.