‘Test for swine flu even if there’s only one symptom’

He was speaking to Pune Zilla Parishad authorities in presence of district Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar. Azad had come to Pune to inaugurate a bivalent Oral Polio vaccine on pulse polio day on Sunday.

District health authorities agreed with Azad and said steps were being taken to identify such cases.

“Consider testing of non-symptomatic patients also for H1N1 and administer Tamiflu. At least,there is no shortage of Tamiflu,” Azad said.

A district health officer said that there were 96 Primary Health Centres in Pune district where Tamiflu is available; several private practitioners also had it. Later,Azad said that a vaccine for H1N1 would be made available from April.

The bivalent polio vaccine that Azad released works against the prevalent P1 and P3 types of polio. The P2 virus was eliminated in 1999.  

Azad administered the first dose of this year’s polio immunisation programme in the city. By the end of the day,in Pune city,at least 90 per cent of the targeted 3.45 lakh children had been covered. “In all,3.92 lakh children were the beneficiaries and 3,400 booths were set up on Sunday,” said Sanjay  Kumar ,CEO,Zilla Parishad. Overall,17 crore children in the country would be immunised.

“Pune has not had a single polio case since 1999. Across the state,there was no polio case in 2009. In 2008,there were 2 cases,” said Kumar.

After the first round on January 10,2,600 people will conduct door-to-door visits to ensure children have been immunised against polio,Tore said.  

This is to also ensure that newborn babies are immunised right from birth.  

A total of 10,000 employees were working on Sunday to ensure the success of the pulse polio campaign. Sugar factories also participated while special booths were arranged at seven entry points to the district,the official said.  

Dr Sunil Tore,who is in charge of the immunisation campaign of the Pune Municipal Corporation said that around 3,550 volunteers enlisted for the campaign while 240 supervisors had been appointed.