every third Indian will be infected

One-third of Indian Population to be infected with Swine Flu

August 9, 2009, 7:42 pm

No means to completely stop it

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Sunday that that is no way the government can stop the spread of the dreaded H1N1 virus in India.

He stated that in all probability, about 33 percent of the Indian population would contract the virus by 2011. However according to a report by WHO, most of those infected will suffer from mostly mild symptoms. But there is no need to panic as India is better prepared than any other nation in the world. ``It's a global pandemic. If countries across the world - around 168 till now - are suffering from a H1N1 outbreak, so will India. We are, however, lucky that it didn't start from here,'' Azad said.

According to Azad, HiN1 hasn't even reached the pandemic stage yet in the country. Azad in fact complimented the medical authorities and security personnel who kept swine flu in india at bay for so long when countries like UK and US reported swine flu cases in thousands per day.

`In England, there were 30,000 cases of H1N1 last week and 1.10 lakh cases the week before. Around 36 people have died there so far. In Argentina, they have registered a total of 7.62 lakh cases of flu of which 93% are H1N1 infections. They have had 337 deaths,'' the minister said.

"The US, which has stopped recording positive cases, has at present 6,506 people hospitalized with H1N1 infection and 436 deaths. In Australia, there are around 30,000 confirmed H1N1 cases with 85 deaths. So you can understand the intensity of the virus spread. In comparison, till yesterday India had 782 positive H1N1 cases of which 511 have been treated and discharged and 271 are under treatment. We have recorded four deaths till now,'' he added.

According to the health minister, two of India's innovative interventions - entry screening at airports and ports and mass scale contact tracing - have proved a saver. ``Or else, by now we would have had crores of H1N1 infected people,'' Azad said. He said India's interventions had been applauded globally. ``We have till now screened over 45 lakh passengers in 22 international airports. Every third H1N1 positive case in India was identified through airport screening. And then we tracked down every single person the infected patient may have come in contact with, looking for H1N1 symptoms in them. Till now, over 8,000 contacts of infected patients have been traced and given prophylactic treatment besides those who were found to be H1N1 positive,'' he said.

So what are the new

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