GOVT TAKES SEVEN STEPS TO PREVENT SWINE FLU

Bandung, April 29 (ANTARA) - The government is taking seven steps to prevent the swine flu virus from spreading to the country.

One of the steps is intalling thermal scanners at international airports, the health minister Siti Fadilah Supari said in her circular, read out by president director of Hasan Sadikin Hospital, Prof Dr dr Cissy RS Prawira SpA(K) Msc, to newsmen here on Tuesday.

The other steps include re-activating around 80 sentinels for surveillance against ILI and pneumonia both in clinical or virological forms and preparing medicines for overcoming the disease, which are basically Oseltamivir so far used to deal with bird flu.

The government has also prepared 100 hospitals that have the capability of handling the disease as reference hospitals and laboratories that have so far handled birdflu virus with the capacity to examine the swine flu H1N1 virus.

Meanwhile dissemination of information about the threat is also being intensified and preparedness is built in villages. The government also prepares simulation program as a concrete step to deal with public health emergency of international concern like the swine flu.

Cissy said the birdflu H5N1 virus is more dangerous than the H1N1 virus, particularly in Indonesia, in view of the death toll the H5N1 virus had caused so far.
The H1N1 virus, which usually lived in regions with four seasons, is possibly unable to live in tropical countries like Indonesia, Cissy said.