Dubai, August 09: Private hospitals and clinics in the UAE have demanded for the immediate release of guidelines to handle suspected and confirmed cases of swine flu (H1N1) after the health ministry warned them of legal action against failure to notify cases.
The Supervisory Committee for Combating Swine Flu on Monday warned healthcare facilities that legal action would be taken if any of them failed to comply with the Ministry of Health (MoH) directives and the Federal Law pertaining to the notification of infectious diseases, for prevention of epidemics.
Director General of the Ministry of Health, Dr Ali Ahmed bin Shakar, said the ministry would soon bring out clear-cut guidelines for the home isolation and hospital admission of patients with H1N1infection.
In the absence of such guidelines, private clinics and hospitals say they are clueless about the method of handling cases. Requesting anonymity, officials and doctors have also pointed out that it will be difficult for them to detect all cases in the initial stages without the facilities for conducting confirmatory tests. The confirmatory lab tests are conducted at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City and Zayed Military Hospital in Abu Dhabi. With the rapid tests to detect the presence of Influenza A proving to be fruitless in some cases, practitioners are now left with the option of initiating symptomatic treatment.
However, since swine flu symptoms are almost similar to common flu and upper respiratory infections, doctors say they are finding it difficult to differentiate the cases in the initial stages.
The efficiency of private hospitals in detecting H1N1 infection was recently questioned when it was revealed that the first patient to die in Qatar had visited a Dubai hospital twice following the infection, which went undetected here.
The medical director of a Dubai-based Indian group of healthcare institutions said healthcare institutions were in a dilemma as any patient with acute asthma bronchial asthma can develop pneumonia, which is described as the major cause of death in swine flu cases. “About 90 per cent of child patients have cold. It is not a practical solution to conduct rapid tests on all those who have a cough and cold or other flu symptoms as per the ‘case definition’ issued in April.”
After the ministry’s warning came, he said, the group has decided to refer all suspected cases to government hospitals with the capability of isolating and treating patients.
“We cannot take risks. If anything goes wrong, we will be in trouble. So, we have decided to immediately inform the preventive medicine department of any suspected case.”
Now that the ministry has also decided to put mild cases of swine flu in home quarantine, doctors said they needed apt instructions for effective implementation of the system.
“When I tell a swine flu patient… it is okay for him to go home and continue taking medicine, he may not be convinced if I can’t tell him that it is as per the ministry’s instruction and is a normal practice now. There could be many patients who feel safer to be treated in hospitals though their infection could be mild,” said the medial director of another hospital in Dubai.
The official said authorities should immediately come up with guidelines identifying patients to be tested, sent for home quarantine or for hospital admission. A paediatrician in Sharjah said her clinic did not have the capacity for doing rapid tests and they did not know what to do when patients doubted if their symptoms were related to swine flu. “We don’t have any clear-cut instructions on dealing with such cases. We need them soon,” she said.
–Agencies