Swine Flu in India: Parent's fear factor
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Surekha Kadapa-Bose
Story 1: "It is so scary," exclaimed Sri Rekha Pillai, a journalist working with a Mumbai-based monthly lifestyle magazine about swine flu epidemic. Her five-year-old daughter Ria is studying in senior KG class at Poonawalla High School, in Mumbai's western suburb of Santa Cruz. "Thankfully the schools have closed down. But even then I made sure she wore a mask to school."
Story 2: "Although my daughter doesn't like to wear the mask, I have persuaded her to at least tie a handkerchief across her nose. She uses local trains to travel from Thane to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) where her college, St. Xavier's, is located. So, naturally she is exposed to so many things.", commented Shashi Iyer, a senior Income Tax (IT) official in Mumbai.
Story 4: "My six-year-old daughter, Ananya, studying at St. Gregarious in Chembur, was asked by the school authorities to compulsorily wear a mask. Although she is very uncomfortable with it, I make sure she wears one," said Andrea Barton D' Souza, wife of a Mumbai-based businessman.
Story 5: "Although both my children, studying at the BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) school, don't wear mask. I have made sure they don't expose themselves to an unnecessary risk by going out of the BARC campus where we stay", explained Dr. Santwana Chandrarkar, an assistant Professor at the D.Y. Patil Hospital in New Bombay and a senior visiting physician at the Niramaya Holistic Centre at Chembur.
These are all the comments and thoughts of the parents from Mumbai. It is clear from these that there is only one concern on the mind of the average Mumbaikar these days - the deadly H1N1 virus, or swine flu, a respiratory disease caused by a new strain of influenza. Swine flu is very similar to other flu viruses but contains genetic material found in birds, human and pigs, and has mutated to become a human virus.
Mumbai is a city for more than 10 million people. Though the other seasonal diseases like jaundice, typhoid, malaria and dengue are responsible for many more deaths each year than swine flu has claimed, yet the panic surrounding swine flu is unprecedented. In fact, anyone who has visited Mumbai for the first time today will presume that Mumbaikars have a new dress code - a nose-mouth mask!
The government of the Indian state of Maharashtra has taken stepped-up efforts to contain the flu by practically shutting down the cities of Pune and Mumbai for a few days and roping in private hospitals to deliver the required healthcare. On the other hand, anxious mothers in both cities have declared a domestic war against the virus where abundant precaution is their battle cry.
Andrea and Shashi supports what Dr Chandrarkar said, "According to the medical bulletins, only health workers are supposed to wear the masks. But then people don't want to take a risk when they don't know what the consequences are going to be" and feel that while they aren't exactly panicking, they certainly don't want to expose themselves or their family members to any ailment, however mild or ferocious it might be. "Why take a chance?", they both said. Everybody believes that in a city like Mumbai, which has such a large population and a lot of in-bound traffic from abroad, it is the best to be careful.
Shashi whose daughter Karishma is doing her Bachelor's, makes sure that she doesn't consume anything from outside. "I pack her lunch box and drinking water bottle. She has, on her own, opted out of regular outings with friends, which was once a part of her routine. She now heads straight back home from college," revealed the cautious mom.
Andrea too has made several lifestyle changes. "Although I haven't stopped Ananya from enjoying her evening games, I don't take her out to market places. She is a lively child so I allow her to go and play with other kids in the housing society. But outside snacks are a strict no-no. Even David, my husband, has made it a point not to eat food from outside and he drinks either bottled water or the boiled water that he carries from home to work," she said.
Sri Rekha who stays at Versova has bought several masks for her daughter. She, too, doesn't like to keep her daughter caged inside the apartment. So she has allowed her to go and play with the other kids in the neighbourhood but has also made it mandatory to follow a proper hygiene routine once she is back. In fact, all the women spoken to said that they now make their family members wash their hands, feet and faces with soap immediately after returning from school, office or play, and have banned outside food - including cakes and pastries.
"If the city municipal corporation ensured proper care and collected and disposed all garbage off properly, many of the airborne disease, we face, could have easily been curbed. Besides if citizens took care to use the dustbins kept on the sidewalks, the city would have remained cleaner.", observed Shashi.
But Harkanbai Jagtap, who works as a domestic worker in several flats in Thane and the mother of three children studying in municipal schools, has a different take on swine flu, scoffing at the fear caused by it, unlike the others. She stays at the Gandhi Nagar slum in Thane and mentioned, "In our jhopadpatti (slum), every day someone or the other is dying of some disease or somehow else. If nothing else, alcohol kills them. Things like swine flu come and go. We don't bother about it."
She has a point there. According to several doctors and health experts, swine flu is just flu with a different name. People should just take simple precautions, build their general immunity and, yes, keep panic at bay, they advice.
If there is a bright side to the swine flu scare, it is this -- it has made both ordinary citizens and the state more conscious of public health and general hygiene.
Courtesy: News Network/ WFS
Story 1: "It is so scary," exclaimed Sri Rekha Pillai, a journalist working with a Mumbai-based monthly lifestyle magazine about swine flu epidemic. Her five-year-old daughter Ria is studying in senior KG class at Poonawalla High School, in Mumbai's western suburb of Santa Cruz. "Thankfully the schools have closed down. But even then I made sure she wore a mask to school."
Story 2: "Although my daughter doesn't like to wear the mask, I have persuaded her to at least tie a handkerchief across her nose. She uses local trains to travel from Thane to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) where her college, St. Xavier's, is located. So, naturally she is exposed to so many things.", commented Shashi Iyer, a senior Income Tax (IT) official in Mumbai.
Story 4: "My six-year-old daughter, Ananya, studying at St. Gregarious in Chembur, was asked by the school authorities to compulsorily wear a mask. Although she is very uncomfortable with it, I make sure she wears one," said Andrea Barton D' Souza, wife of a Mumbai-based businessman.
Story 5: "Although both my children, studying at the BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) school, don't wear mask. I have made sure they don't expose themselves to an unnecessary risk by going out of the BARC campus where we stay", explained Dr. Santwana Chandrarkar, an assistant Professor at the D.Y. Patil Hospital in New Bombay and a senior visiting physician at the Niramaya Holistic Centre at Chembur.
These are all the comments and thoughts of the parents from Mumbai. It is clear from these that there is only one concern on the mind of the average Mumbaikar these days - the deadly H1N1 virus, or swine flu, a respiratory disease caused by a new strain of influenza. Swine flu is very similar to other flu viruses but contains genetic material found in birds, human and pigs, and has mutated to become a human virus.
Mumbai is a city for more than 10 million people. Though the other seasonal diseases like jaundice, typhoid, malaria and dengue are responsible for many more deaths each year than swine flu has claimed, yet the panic surrounding swine flu is unprecedented. In fact, anyone who has visited Mumbai for the first time today will presume that Mumbaikars have a new dress code - a nose-mouth mask!
The government of the Indian state of Maharashtra has taken stepped-up efforts to contain the flu by practically shutting down the cities of Pune and Mumbai for a few days and roping in private hospitals to deliver the required healthcare. On the other hand, anxious mothers in both cities have declared a domestic war against the virus where abundant precaution is their battle cry.
Andrea and Shashi supports what Dr Chandrarkar said, "According to the medical bulletins, only health workers are supposed to wear the masks. But then people don't want to take a risk when they don't know what the consequences are going to be" and feel that while they aren't exactly panicking, they certainly don't want to expose themselves or their family members to any ailment, however mild or ferocious it might be. "Why take a chance?", they both said. Everybody believes that in a city like Mumbai, which has such a large population and a lot of in-bound traffic from abroad, it is the best to be careful.
Shashi whose daughter Karishma is doing her Bachelor's, makes sure that she doesn't consume anything from outside. "I pack her lunch box and drinking water bottle. She has, on her own, opted out of regular outings with friends, which was once a part of her routine. She now heads straight back home from college," revealed the cautious mom.
Andrea too has made several lifestyle changes. "Although I haven't stopped Ananya from enjoying her evening games, I don't take her out to market places. She is a lively child so I allow her to go and play with other kids in the housing society. But outside snacks are a strict no-no. Even David, my husband, has made it a point not to eat food from outside and he drinks either bottled water or the boiled water that he carries from home to work," she said.
Sri Rekha who stays at Versova has bought several masks for her daughter. She, too, doesn't like to keep her daughter caged inside the apartment. So she has allowed her to go and play with the other kids in the neighbourhood but has also made it mandatory to follow a proper hygiene routine once she is back. In fact, all the women spoken to said that they now make their family members wash their hands, feet and faces with soap immediately after returning from school, office or play, and have banned outside food - including cakes and pastries.
"If the city municipal corporation ensured proper care and collected and disposed all garbage off properly, many of the airborne disease, we face, could have easily been curbed. Besides if citizens took care to use the dustbins kept on the sidewalks, the city would have remained cleaner.", observed Shashi.
But Harkanbai Jagtap, who works as a domestic worker in several flats in Thane and the mother of three children studying in municipal schools, has a different take on swine flu, scoffing at the fear caused by it, unlike the others. She stays at the Gandhi Nagar slum in Thane and mentioned, "In our jhopadpatti (slum), every day someone or the other is dying of some disease or somehow else. If nothing else, alcohol kills them. Things like swine flu come and go. We don't bother about it."
She has a point there. According to several doctors and health experts, swine flu is just flu with a different name. People should just take simple precautions, build their general immunity and, yes, keep panic at bay, they advice.
If there is a bright side to the swine flu scare, it is this -- it has made both ordinary citizens and the state more conscious of public health and general hygiene.
Courtesy: News Network/ WFS