It’s completely understandable as it is rational for a country, irrespective of its size and status, to respond zealously to a pandemic when it arrives. The Government and health authorities have had no choice but to take severe steps in their attempts to restrain the worse virus for over 40 years, but with the ubiquitous swine flu slowly fading, the question now is: have we all just over-reacted?
If we can reflect back to April last year when the news officially broke that swine flu had made its way over from Mexico, with bold headlines such as “killer pig flu” circulating, it was hardly surprising that we soon became a paranoid nation. The Government inevitably started to distribute anti-flu drugs, with pharmaceutical companies driving forward their vaccine provisions – almost as if they the population were addicts of a craving they couldn’t yet diagnose. The Health Chiefs, however, were quick to provide symptoms for this diagnosis, but preventative action was now widespread and people across the UK were buying drugs quicker than they could sneeze.
So, as we are now coming out of what will hopefully be the end of a bitterly-cold spell of weather, the levels of illness have reportedly been misjudged, with 360 deaths to-date, and officials now claiming a national over-reaction to the pandemic. The result of this has put a huge financial burden on the UK’s shoulders, with the bill totalling millions of pounds to subsidise the extreme doses of Tamiflu and Relenza – the two main anti-viral antidotes to swine flu – and is likely to keep rising, particularly with vaccines still being enforced to schools across the UK.
The good news, however, is that the number of weekly cases has dropped below 5,000 in England, but health experts are nevertheless warning the government to remember that the last summer the toll was exceeding 100,000 casualties and to remain cautious.
"I will not relax until February or March. This virus could always mutate. It has not really got into the elderly yet and if it does we could see many more deaths,” said Professor John Oxford, one of the UK's leading flu virologists. "There is also the risk it could come back next winter - that has happened in previous pandemics." So the message is clear: it’s not necessarily a bad thing to over-react to a pandemic, we just need to be educated more about it, particularly in high risk areas such as schools. None of us want to see a reoccurrence of the flu in our schools and that’s why our main intention for 2010 is to continue encouraging hand hygiene practices among young children, as well as teaching schools to be more vigilant to endemics such as swine flu.
See how our Albany Max programme can encourage hand washing hygiene at your school by arranging a visit today.
