Like it or not, we Nepalis are obsessed with everything Indian. Many of us love to hate the Indian cricket team, the swaggering reigning World Champions now the biggest emblem of the Big Brother next door. At the other extreme we also have die-hard fans of Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni. Similarly, the need for a ‘new force’ in Nepal is felt as soon as AAP rises in Delhi.Bollywood movies sell like hot MoMos: Dhoom 3 was so successful many Nepali producers had to delay the release of their films to escape the long shadow of the Aamir Khan starrer. India is currently in the grip of a swine flu epidemic, with death toll crossing 1,000. Nepalis, invariably, were starting to feel a little jittery. So when the news emerged that Bollywood heartthrob Sonam Kapoor was down with swine flu, the potency of the latest outbreak hit home with Nepalis, with ironic images of the simpering Black beauty hugging news pages of our broadsheets. If someone with Kapoor’s cosseted existence could contract the flu, why, folks here are saying, anyone could have it! It didn’t help Nepal reported its first swine-flu death on the same day that the virus was confirmed in Kapoor.
There is no need to panic as yet. Swine flu is fatal in under a percentage of those it infects. According to the latest count, the number of reported cases in Nepal this year has reached around 50; last year, 300 were reportedly infected, with four deaths. Though late, the government has swung into action. The Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) is undertaking a nationwide campaign for awareness and early detection and treatment. This is important. The fatality of swine flu increases disproportionately in latter stages. Even so, the majority of those infected survive. Perhaps this is the reason there has not been full-blown panic, not in India, and certainly not in Nepal. But people are worried. The EDCD is receiving more and more mucus samples for testing from suspected cases around the country. Most of the samples are from children under five, those above 65 and pregnant women, the three most vulnerable groups.
It is important that swine flu cases are identified and treated at the earliest. Otherwise, there is the risk of the virus mutating into a more dangerous avatar. As we have been emphasizing, rather than swine flu per se, we should be more worried about our lack of preparedness to handle just about any kind of epidemic, be it swine flu, avian influenza or Ebola. Our quarantine facilities are makeshift arrangements; most of them don’t work during load-shedding hours. Nor do we have trained personnel to run such facilities. Last year, the country was on tenterhooks as cases of Ebola, a viral disease 25 times more lethal than swine flu, were reported in India. This year, swine flu is the object of our fear. Rather than always looking at India to gauge our preparedness (or lack thereof), we would do well to fortify our defenses on our own. Keeping out a potential health catastrophe won’t be easy in this globalized world with porous borders. But the cost of inaction would be many times more.
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