One of the most interesting things to arise from my recent interview with Bekey was the inside view of the National Health Service (NHS) response to suspected swine flu cases.
Bekey spends her days travelling between local schools as a music teacher, and we’ve all seen reports of schools closing after cases of swine flu were confirmed in pupils. So did Bekey’s infection result in the closure of several schools? As Bekey told HN:
Bekey: No. None of my schools have closed at all [...]One of my schools this week had thirty or forty of the kids off, but they stayed open, because if you’ve got it it’s a bit late to close.
Remember, this happened two weeks ago, whilst the government said they were trying to contain the virus. But this doesn’t seem like containment to me. The only people who became seriously concerned with Bekey’s infection were the hospital where Bekey’s sister and house-mate, Amy, works. Once Amy herself started to show symptoms:
Bekey: They immediately put all her close colleagues on Tamiflu and sent somebody home as they’d come in with a bit of a sniffle.
Understandable, really, as they need to protect seriously ill patients from any sort of infection.
The mention of Tamiflu also raises a couple of questions. Was Bekey offered the anti-viral drugs? Were her close contacts?
Bekey: When the doctor came round [to do the initial swab] he said they were only giving anti-virals to people at risk: those with diabetes, heart condition or weak kidneys or lungs. Anything that might be aggravated by having flu.
However, when a different doctor came round a week later to test Amy for swine flu:
Bekey: The doctor brought a prescription round for Amy as they were now being advised to give out anti-virals to anyone who has been in contact with the swine flu.
But they were doing this at the start of the outbreak earlier this year. So what was going on?
I don’t know, and it seems not to matter now as the UK government has changed its policy to one of treatment, not containment. In my view, a containment strategy was never going to work for long, as the flu spreads very easily. The other problem with the containment strategy is that giving low doses of Tamiflu to huge numbers of people will only encourage the swine flu virus to develop resistance (as has been seen elsewhere). Using large quantities of Tamiflu could also have a detrimental impact on the environment.
My final thought on swine flu in the UK is this: news coverage of the NHS is often fairly negative. In this case, by acting sensibly and ignoring government containment advice, health workers have probably saved the cash-strapped NHS many thousands of pounds that can now be used to treat life-threatening illnesses.
I found this really interesting, as a fellow teacher. many of our pupils are off – about 5 per class. Many more are exhibiting symptoms but are in anyway. And while some have been given Tamiflu, despite not being one of the ‘vulnerable’ categories, many more have no medication. It all seems very inconsistent.