Khara Per­sad

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said there were six con­firmed in­fluen­za A H1N1 virus (swine flu) cas­es in T&T, but as­sured the pub­lic there was no need to pan­ic.

He could not con­firm that there was a death at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) last Sat­ur­day as a re­sult of the virus.

"There's a pos­si­bil­i­ty...Most like­ly it was," Khan said.

Khan ex­plained it was like­ly the pub­lic's re­cent fear and con­cern were trig­gered by re­ports of in­stances of death as a re­sult of the virus in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, one per­son has died in Bar­ba­dos.

Speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day at his min­istry head­quar­ters on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, Khan said there was no epi­dem­ic, and fur­ther­more, swine flu cas­es were "noth­ing new" to the coun­try.

"I want to as­sure the pub­lic that this H1N1 which is called swine flu...has been around in T&T since 2009. We have been hav­ing cas­es since 2009."

He said the min­istry was try­ing to avoid the spread of "over­re­ac­tion and overtreat­ment" through­out the coun­try, as it did in 2009.

While say­ing high-risk peo­ple in­clud­ed chil­dren, se­niors and those with weak­er im­mune sys­tems, Khan still ad­vised any­one who showed symp­toms of the virus–com­mon cold, fever, cough– to go im­me­di­ate­ly to a health fa­cil­i­ty.

"I would sug­gest that any­body who, or whose fam­i­ly has these symp­toms should see a med­ical doc­tor to be as­sessed as soon as pos­si­ble."

When asked whether fa­cil­i­ties were ready for such an in­flux of peo­ple who may ex­pe­ri­ence flu-like symp­toms, Khan was em­phat­ic that there were suf­fi­cient med­ical per­son­nel and med­i­cine avail­able.

"We have a lot of health pro­fes­sion­als in the coun­try, both pub­lic and pri­vate and I think they will be tak­ing care of this dis­or­der. And the ones that need fur­ther treat­ment, we send to the emer­gency cen­tres."

He said peo­ple should not seek out vac­ci­na­tions if they think they have the virus.

"[At] the Min­istry of Health we have ad­e­quate med­ica­tion for man­age­ment, we have ad­e­quate vac­ci­na­tion pre­ven­tion. But there should not be a run on vac­ci­na­tions."

Not all pa­tients would re­ceive a vac­cine, as that would be re­served for high-risk pa­tients af­ter test­ing.

"Those are the ones we would be look­ing to vac­ci­nate af­ter as­sess­ment by a med­ical doc­tor at a health of­fice or a pri­vate cen­tre."

He said when peo­ple went for treat­ment too late their res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tems would al­ready be in "dis­ar­ray," in­creas­ing the risk of death.

Khan al­so stressed that pa­tients should not re­ly on any type of an­tibi­otics, as those are in­ef­fec­tive in fight­ing off the virus.

"You must go to the near­est emer­gency cen­tre for treat­ment, be­cause you have to have in­ten­sive care man­age­ment where you may need as­sist­ed ven­ti­la­tion."

Re­sults from test­ing for the virus takes up to five days to process, Khan said.

Air­port au­thor­i­ties have been put on the alert to be vig­i­lant about in­com­ing and out­go­ing trav­ellers.

"We've alert­ed the air­lines to look for peo­ple with symp­toms, and they would not be able to fly."

Asked if spe­cial screen­ing would be done on pas­sen­gers from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, Khan said the strin­gent checks were for every­one.

"This is a prob­lem that is through­out Cari­com and through­out the world since 2009."

The min­istry plans to start a cam­paign to pro­mote aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion, with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pam­phlets in health fa­cil­i­ties and schools about the virus's symp­toms and how to pre­vent in­fec­tion.