RANGOON — Officials of the Department of Health and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) claim they have the capacity to control a major outbreak of swine flu in the military-ruled country.
"We have enough capacity and facilities to control the pandemic disease, so it cannot seriously spread in the country," said Dr. Myo Lwin, a national consultant (avian influenza) with WHO/Burma.
He also said that health officials have been intensively taking systematic preventive and surveillance measures at Yangon [Rangoon] International Airport and at all border checkpoints since April 28 in order to prevent a serious outbreak.
Another official from the department of health claimed that they have stockpiled tens of thousands of Tamiflu capsules donated by WHO and have enough man-power and health facilities to treat patients.
According to a government announcement, the country has seen only two cases of swine flu so far. The first patient was a 13-year-old student who came back from Singapore with her family on May 26 and the second was a 20-year-old man returned from Thailand on July 6.
While thestudent fully recovered, the man has reportedly had no fever since July 11, according to state-owned media.
"We not only cured the patients successfully, but controlled the disease so that it didn’t infect other people who came into contact with them," the health official said.
However, some health workers who are involved in the preventive and surveillance measures said they are not sure whether they would be able to successfully control the disease.
Though Yangon International Airport has adequate equipment to test passengers who enter the country by plane, there is not enough equipment to test those who enter the country at border checkpoints, according to health workers.
One health worker said it is of a vital importance to monitor the health condition of those who come back from foreign countries for several days, since they cannot know whether those people are infected if they are not showing any symptoms at the time of testing.
Health workers said it is very difficult to monitor the health condition of those who enter the country through border gates.
"We don’t know whether the addresses they give us are real or not, and whether they are complete, which makes it very difficult for us to monitor their condition in their respective towns or villages," a senior health official from the Myanmar Red Cross Society (MRCS) said, citing the example of the two swine flu-infected patients.
“Those two patients had no symptoms at the airport when we tested them. The symptoms only appeared after they had got home.
"We need to monitor the health condition of those who come back from Thailand through border gates more intensively for several days, as our neighboring country has found tens of hundreds of cases already," the MRCS official said.
According to a Thai government's announcement on Tuesday, the number of confirmed cases has passed 4,000, and 24 patients have died of the disease.
irrawaddy
No comments:
Post a Comment