Telangana High Court: Put swine flu precautions in place

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has directed the State Government to submit details with regard to efforts to include private hospitals and diagnostic centres in tackling the impending swine flu threat, which lurks dangerously in winter.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy, was dealing with two PILs related to inadequate medical facilities in government hospitals to deal with epidemics like dengue, swine flu, malaria and other fevers.

As there were no equipped government diagnostic labs in the district headquarters, and only two government hospitals in Hyderabad having the facility to diagnose swine flu, the Court, on an earlier occasion, had directed the State to involve private hospitals to shoulder responsibility to deal with swine-flu.
It also had directed the Sate to establish diagnostic centres in 10 cities besides running awareness campaigns about the disease and facilities available through electronic and print media.

In response to the court orders, the government recently submitted that it has taken concrete steps to make people be aware of the symptoms and treatment by distributing around 15 lakh pamphlets and two lakh posters.

The government also submitted that it had sought permission from National Centre for Disease Control for establishing ten diagnostic labs, in accordance with the court’s direction. However, it said that they have not received permission to establish labs. However, the government failed to submit details about steps taken to bring private hospitals on-board. The Court asked the government to submit all details in this regard by Friday.