Pigs' ear of a health crisis management system (Swine Flu)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Swine Flu
Date:	14/07/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Days off work ill? I dunno.

Disadvantages: Difficult to find any useful or coherent official information, out there

Two cases of swine flu at the local nursery in the last week....classed as 'diagnosed' (but not 'confirmed', since they're not bothering confirming swine flu cases by doing the throat swabs anymore), and another four suspected cases over the same time. News on the grapevine is that the two 'confirmed' little 'uns have been given antivirals and are doing fine.

Own sprog mildly ill with nebulous symptoms (sore throat, temperature) over the weekend. Stinky breath in mornings so tonsilitis, I thought. And felt a bit nebulously ill myself, yesterday. Slight temperature, stomach upsets, etc.

GP unavailable by phone so ran the NHS's Swine Flu on-line symptom checker this morning. The horror, the horror. Tick positive for all sorts of vaguely nebulous symptoms of ill health on the online health checker (sore head, muscles achey, runny nose, loss of appetite, feeling tired etc.) End result: you might have swine flu so telephone your GP.

Tried to ring GP yet again; line still engaged. Given that 'official' advice is to telephone your GP, and that this presumed health crisis has been brewing for months and months, find it slightly odd that very basic measures (e.g. more phone lines and operators for local health centres) have not yet been put in place.

Tried the NHS Swine Flu call number next; 0845 4647. Rotated round the automated call screening process a couple of times; alarmed when heard instuction 'if calling on behalf of an under age sprog or if you are pregnant (personally am 6 months gone), press option two to speak to an operator immediately' - pressed option two accordingly; line when dead following 'this service has now been discontinued' message.

Tried to find local info on Swine Flu via NHS page next. Noted that some of the 'Current Swine Flu Health Crisis' info has not been updated since June 24th (is now July 14th). Ended up, mystifyingly, after inputting home postcode for 'local information' at Stroud District Council's home page looking at basic information on recycling plans for this area; desired 'up to date local information on swine flu' clearly does not exist.

Slightly worried re. being pregnant and possibly swine-flu-infected now; did an AltaVista search for 'swine flu pregnancy' and found UK govt. advice is for all pregnant women to take Tamiflu despite there being no studies that have examined the effects of flu antivirals on developing foetuses.

Sod that for a game of soldiers!

Increasingly fed up with own sustained failure to contact either health professionals or to find coherent / useful government information on the current swine flu crisis, have decided to manage own admittedly mild (and probably therefore not swine flu) symptoms using bed-rest, Lemsip and lots of daytime TV viewing of 'The Jeremy Kyle Show'.

Heaven help us all if the virus mutates into a more virulent form. The way swine flu is not being managed even in its current, not particularly troublesome state - if that happens we'll all definitely have had it.

Summary: Has intensive agricultural practice finally done for us all?