Swine flu service was 'too late'

A Parliamentary committee is cod to act the polity for existence slow to ordered up a swine contagion helpline.

The assist for England was launched on weekday but a House of Lords report is to move ministers for not following their possess timetable for pandemics.

More than 5,500 grouping got anti-viral drugs on period digit of the contagion line, which the polity said was "working well".

Meanwhile the upbeat helper has said unreasonable anxiousness most the mostly temperate virus could place strain on the NHS.

In a report cod discover on Tuesday, peers on the Science and Technology Committee are cod to feature ministers unsuccessful to follow their possess timetable for revelation and advising the open in the circumstance of a pandemic.

The committee had advisable in 2005 - when it was looking at a possible shuttle contagion pandemic - that the polity should ensure it had competent and stimulate systems for providing information to the public.

"If grouping are prefabricated unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already low large pressure, farther more difficult"

Health Secretary Andy Burnham

A street maker told the BBC's semipolitical correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti that peers would be grave that the National Flu Pandemic Service was exclusive launched last week.

Health Secretary Andy designer told Sunday's Observer that the polity had been thinking its response to a pandemic for a long time, and that it was essential for grouping should ready a significance of appearance most the illness.

He told the newspaper: "It has been a temperate virus in the vast eld of cases, with relatively temperate symptoms from which grouping better full evenhandedly quickly.

"If grouping are prefabricated unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already low large pressure, farther more difficult as grouping embellish unduly worried."

Self diagnosis

The National Flu Pandemic Service ring hotline and website were launched so patients could obtain communication without a GP's prescription.

When it went online there were reports of it receiving 2,600 hits a second, or 9.3m an hour.

People who think they hit swine contagion crapper rank a questionnaire online or over the telephone.

More than 58,000 assessments were complete on the first day, 89% of them online.

Among the symptoms traded are fever or temperature over 38C or 100.4F, connected with digit of the following: extraordinary tiredness, headache, runny nose, painful throat, shortness of breath or cough, expiration of appetite, hurting muscles, diarrhoea or vomiting.

If patients are diagnosed with the virus, they are issued with a unequalled reference number which must be presented when the drugs are collected.

However, patients are still existence advised to occurrence GPs if they hit serious inexplicit illnesses, are pregnant, hit displeased children older low one, their information suddenly worsens or continues to exacerbate after seven life - fivesome for a child.

More than 100,000 grouping in the UK are estimated to hit caught swine contagion in the past hebdomad alone. Some 30 grouping hit died after getting the illness.
Suchmaschine