The Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) of the Department of Health Services (DoHS), which is responsible for dealing with the situation, said that it does not hasve the budget to deal with the situation."We have been unable to supply medicine and health workers promptly in the affected villages due to a budget crunch," Dr Baburam Marasini, director at EDCD, said adding,. "Due to budget scarcity, we could not even bring enough samples from the infected people to the capital for examination."
According to Dr Marasini, the disease could have been properly identified and lives could have been saved if there had been sufficient budgetary resources. "We are struggling to manage funds to respond to the outbreak," he further informed.
The EDCD said that it has not even been able to provide travel allowances and daily allowances to medical personnel deployed in the field. "They even have problems finding regular meals and a place to sleep," he said. He also said the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) has not allocated even a single penny for controlling the outbreak in Jajarkot.
Dr Marasini informed that the EDCD has requested MoHP to allocate funds to handle the emergency situation but the latter has not responded yet.
Interestingly, records show that the ministry provides millions for the treatment of political leaders in hospitals abroad. The ministry also gives out huge amounts every year to hospitals in which influential party leaders have a stake.
Out of 12 samples from Jajarkot examined by the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) at DoHS this week, swine flu virus was confirmed in three. On Thursday, an additional six samples from infected people have been brought to NPHL. The report on the samples would be coming out only after 72 hours.
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