FLU: HOSPITALS SLOW TO GEAR UP

On a day on
which Swine Flu claimed
its first victim in the city,
26-year-old school teacher
Roopa, hospitals seemed
to be finally gearing up,
albeit still slowly, to fight
the pandemic, even as the
single government hospital
that has been doing the job
until now, the Rajiv Gandhi
Institute of Chest Diseases
(RGICD), is proving
to be woefully inadequately
equipped to deal with
the rising number of
infected people.
Relatives of Ghena
Abdul Kharim, a 35-yearold
Yemenese woman who
landed in the city two days
ago, shifted her from
RGICD to St. John’s Hospital
after they found that
the former did not have
facilities to treat critical
patients.
RGICD has put up 10 flu
screening counters and 18
beds in an unventilated
isolation ward, but does
not have an intensive care
unit (ICU).
Fortunately, though, at
least a dozen of the 36
other hospitals, including
private specialty ones,
identified by the government
for Swine Flu treatment,
are making their
own arrangements to
obtain test kits — the government
is not providing
the kits — and reserving
beds and isolation wards,
although they too are not
ready yet to take in critical
patients into their ICUs.
St. John’s Hospital, for
instance, began taking
throat swabs for testing on
Wednesday and is already
treating two critical cases,
although only one of them
is confirmed to be of
Swine Flu. It has reserved
three beds each for
children and adults affected
by H1N1, but none in
the ICU yet.
“We cannot reserve beds
for Swine Flu patients in
the ICU and deny the facilities
to other critical
patients,” the hospital’s
chief of medical services
Dr George D’Souza of St.
John’s Hospital explained.