By Michael Vurens van Es
KATHMANDU, Nepal
Health experts and government officials in Nepal are on high alert after an outbreak of the potentially deadly H1N1 virus, more commonly known as swine flu.
“The government has taken all possible measures and is monitoring the situation,” Dr. Senendra Uprety, Director General of the Department of Health Services, told Anadolu Agency.
According to Uprety, the government has stockpiled H1N1 vaccines and is launching an awareness campaign to combat the spread of the virus, which is a seasonal occurrence in Nepal.
“This is a seasonal flu. Individuals must take all necessary precautions and preventative measures,” said Uprety.
Nepal’s health authorities have confirmed the existence of 48 cases of swine flu after testing 334 samples. According to authorities, it is not yet necessary to report the outbreak to the World Health Organization.
On Sunday, a 50-year-old woman suffering from chronic asthma succumbed to the virus in Kathmandu after being diagnosed with the illness five days earlier.
Though the patient’s death was Nepal’s first swine flu-related fatality of the year, some experts are concerned that the virus has taken a more potent turn.
“Since the virulence differs in each season, the strain of the virus must have become stronger this year,” Dr Arpana Neupane, a physician at Kathmandu’s Norvic Hospital, said earlier this week.
Others disagree. Geeta Shakya, director of the National Public Health Laboratory has resisted calls for further analysis of the present strain of the virus, saying that it must be weaker as only a third of samples tested have come back positive, whereas in 2014 the rate was 40 percent.
“From the way that new cases were detected this year, we are sure that it is a weaker strain than that of previous years,” Shakya was reported by local press as saying.
The victim, whose name has been withheld by staff at Model Hospital where she was treated, had not recently travelled outside of the Kathmandu Valley. The case is not believed to be directly linked with the H1N1 outbreak in India, which has infected approximately 20,000 people and claimed more than 1,000 lives already this year.
Officials do however see the possibility of a broader correlation and are taking extra precautions.
“It [the outbreak] could be related. The first two cases detected this season had recently travelled to Delhi,” said Uprety.
Health authorities in Nepal’s Myagdi district, home to Muktinath temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage sight, last week put the region on high alert due to the large number of Indian tourists visiting the area.
In Nawalparasi, a district in Nepal’s Terai region bordering India, the government has set up help desks at points along the two countries’ open border.
In a statement released yesterday, the National Human Rights Commission urged the government to ensure it delivered health rights efficiently and said it will be monitoring the effectiveness of the health desks that the government has set up to deal with the virus.
Meanwhile, in the country’s mid-hill region it emerged on Monday that Ratnya Rajna Laxmi Secondary School in Gorkha was closed after more than 45 of its students exhibited flu-like symptoms commonly associated with swine flu.
At present, none of the students have been diagnosed with the virus, though some are currently under observation at Gorkha Hospital.
In Nepal, swine flu was responsible for 18 fatalities in 2014 and four in 2009, when the global pandemic was at its height. Between 2010 and 2013 the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division did not keep records of swine flu-related deaths.
