As Swine Flu cuts its lethal swathe across India, what helpful resources can citizens – many restricted to their homes in places like Pune -- find, if they turn to the Internet for help? We checked -- and found that some of the most obvious targets of anxious enquiry, seemed to be in a time capsule of their own, utterly insensitive to the crisis with which ordinary Indians and the medical profession is grappling.
Let’s start with the Indian Medical Association, the body that represents over 100,000 Indian members of the medical profession . Every time we tried to access the website http://www.ima-india.org we received a virus warning from our net security provider and had to ‘clean up’ the virus before we could even begin to look at the site. We might as well have not bothered: There was no visual indication on the home page to indicate that the IMA was seized of the Swine flu pandemic. We had to drill down into the contents to dig up the only piece of relevant documentation: a PDF document issued by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) , their monthly newsletter, a special issue on Swine Influenza that was published in March 2009 and seemed not to have been updated since.
We did not fare better with the regional units of IMA from Punjab to Kochi, which had web sites of their own, highlighting building inaugurations and other serious matters of professional interest to the good doctors but nothing to show that the organisation was aware of the swirling health crisis in the country.
You would have thought the parent site of the NICD ( now renamed the National Institute of Disease Control since July 30), would live up to its new name ? Think again. The site has been updated right up to August 14 – only to post the latest tender notices. Its only nod to the swine flu crisis, is thesame 5-month old news letter, www.nicd.nic.in/Tdr_CDA_Swine.pdf
What about the Indian Pharmaceutical Association “the premier professional association of pharmacists in India, with a member base of over 10,000, spread across the length & breadth of the nation”? http://www.ipapharma.org There is a call for nominations for their lifetime achievement award, last date September 15, but hey, who has time for irrelevancies like swine flu?
The Pune-based National Insitute of Virology http://www.niv.co.in/ also disappoints. It is the nation’s monitoring centre for influenza; yet sees no need to share any insights or information with the public, that would indicate that it is apprised of the pandemic. The only concession it makes is a text ticker which warns that it has not recommended any indigenous formulation like Nilgiri Oil. Great. Then, what has it recommended?
We stumbled on only two significant government sponsored web resources:
Two: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has its own web resources, which include a daily update, as well as important guidelines for lay citizens as well as the medical profession: http://mohfw.nic.in/swineflu/main.html
The fact that these few official resources are up and running, does not absolve the other agencies we have visited, from recognizing their responsibility to inform and reassure an anxious public. Shame on you, government and industry agencies alike!
Inside and outside India, we also found the following additional swine flu related resources:
( Aug 14 2009)
