Letters: We've got the flu

There is no point blaming anyone else for the outbreak of swine flu. If it is spreading in India, it is because we are lax. The health authorities know swine flu is coming in with travellers coming in from the US and Mexico. So the logical thing to do is to strengthen the vigil on these flights. Ensure that, at the US end, to begin with, there is better scrutiny. If visitors from the US develop swine flu symptoms as soon as they land here, it is because they have swine flu already and it is not being detected. If the matter is taken up at a senior diplomatic level, passengers flying into India can be asked to furnish blood reports before they are granted visas. There is no doubt this will cause a certain amount of disruption, but this has to be weighed against the problems caused if the passenger has swine flu. The authorities here have to map every movement of the passenger and the people s/he infects. And if even one person gets left out of the net and is not given preventive medicine, the disease has every chance of spreading and of mutating into something even more horrible.If this is not being done, it is because we lack the confidence to be able to tell the US and other countries to take action at our end. But if we don’t do it, they are unlikely to do anything to prevent the ‘export’ of swine flu from their countries.

Sanjay Jain, New Delhi