What led to India's first swine flu death? Could it have been easily avoided? Or was it due to serious lapses on the part of the hospital that treated her? It's now clear that there were a series of serious lapses that led to the death of the 14-year-old girl in Pune.
Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad says late diagnosis was the main reason. He says crucial time was lost because she was initially wrongly diagnosed as suffering from pneumonia.
A fatal lapse seems to be that the test done on the girl by a private hospital turned out to be negative. But a second test done by the NICD turned out to be positive but by that time it was too late.
The victim was admitted in a private hospital on July 27. She was shifted to ICU and put on ventilator on July 29. The Pune schoolgirl tested positive for swine flu on July 31.
It must be noted that as many as 16 students are undergoing treatment for swine flu in Pune.
Currently, India has 129 swine flu patients while around 422 patients have already recovered.
Merely four days ago, the Union Health Ministry had issued relaxed guidelines to states to deal with the virus. As per the relaxed guideline, the ministry said that the patients must be isolated at home itself instead of being hospitalised unless the case is chronic.
The ministry had also said that there was no need to shut schools that report swine flu cases. In fact, the ministry had even asked the states to phase out screening of passengers at airports gradually.
Another guideline issued was that the suspect cases should first be taken to the family doctor; not directly quarantined in a government hospital.
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