I read so frequently in the newspapers about the government being prepared, stocks of tamiflu ready, but I firmly believe these are official stockpile rumors to calm people down! Logistically speaking, you have to take a tamiflu pill every day to 'prevent' yourself from bird flu in case of an outbreak. Thus, if you have 1,000,000 pills, you can treat 10 thousand people for 100 days, and considering that population of India is beyond 100 crores, the small "stocks" of tamiflu being sent to the hospitals are nothing short of a joke!
Moreover, Tamiflu isn't necessarily effective against the H5N1! It wasn't designed for that! Even if we believe tamiflu is effective, the government doesnt have enough stock of the drug to treat a significant part of its population! The magnitude of the crises will worsen once the human cases start coming in...I hope it doesnt reach that stage.Imagine you happen to catch bird flu sitting even in a big city like mumbai. It will be just another morning, and you will feel nothing but the symptoms of common cold.. There are very slim chances you will go to the hospital for that! Even if u happen to reach the hospital, most likely you wont be diagnosed with bird flu! (human reports of avian influenza are few, and even the most experienced doctors havent had the exposure to it)
You reach the hospital with symptoms which mimick very mild common cold, the most likely response would be, "Go home, buddy, u have common cold! -- we can't treat you here. We can only treat the most critical patients."
And if you're critical with the bird flu, your chances are very, very slim of surviving it!
This official myth of "preparedness" is nothing but impractical in India, as well as many other countries fighting with this disease!
The age old agade, "prevention is better than cure" never sounded so relevant :)
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