I REFER to Mr Dudley Au's letter on Tuesday, 'Containing H1N1: No runaround please'.
Mr Au's concerns are understandable.
It seems natural to assume that, with an educated populace and constant public exhortations to do the civic-minded and sentient thing, Singaporeans will know any form of flu is infectious and will therefore take basic precautionary measures.
Unfortunately, this is not the case and most patients still need to be instructed repeatedly in explicit terms to have minimal contact, not only with members of the public but also with their own family members.
While N95 masks are effective in confining the virus to flu patients, they are even more effective in keeping the virus at bay for those in close contact with patients.
Yet when I explicitly urge patients to wear face masks, more often than not they look askance, preferring the risk of contracting a virus to the inconvenience and discomfort of wearing a mask.
While it is true that new cases of Influenza A (H1N1) in communities without contact with travellers to affected areas seem to be appearing, almost all flu cases seen by general practitioners (GPs) are the normal strains prevalent in the local population.
The symptoms are exactly the same, varying from the sublime all the way to debilitating fever and severe congestion of the upper respiratory tract. If all such patients were to be referred to the designated hospitals, no number of emergency ambulances and hospital staff will be able to cope with the deluge of patients.
To the credit of the Health Ministry, which continually updates us on the evolving situation, sometimes several times a day, GPs can triage patients into unlikely or suspected H1N1 categories.
This not only assuages the undue concerns on patients' minds, but also prevents the system to combat this scourge from breaking down due to an overload of unnecessary referrals. The medical fraternity is not out to dismiss patients' needs, as there is no reason to do so.
