By IANS,
New Delhi : Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad will brief senior bureaucrats who have been tasked to visit various state to help them contain the spread of H1N1 virus that has claimed eight lives and infected 960 people.
“The health minister will be meeting joint secretaries and additional secretaries drawn from various departments. He will be briefing them and advising them about capacity buildings in the states,” a health official told IANS ahead of the meeting Tuesday evening.
The officials said the 35 senior bureaucrats will be meeting chief ministers too.
“The health minister has also requested state chief ministers to meet these senior officials when they conduct the first meeting. This will help in fast-tracking all the decisions,” the official said.
The decision to rope in Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officials to the various states was taken Monday when Azad held a meeting with Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar and senior health officials.
Azad had admitted that sending letters to states about the swine flu pandemic was having little impact and said the central government would send senior officials to help them tackle the spread of the disease.
“Communication through letters is not showing gravity. We need to work a little harder. We are sending 33 to 35 joint secretaries and additional secretaries of different ministries to states for the purpose,” Azad had said.
“They will impress upon state governments to increase hospitals (for screening), isolation wards. They will meet health secretaries, chief secretaries and health ministers and tell them about the disease, how to manage it and prepare better,” the minister said, adding that states must be better prepared to deal with the pandemic.
“Health is a state subject. They must take extra care to control it. The central government generally sends advisories but this time we are proactive and spoon-feeding them,” Azad said.
A schoolgirl became the eighth victim of the swine flu Tuesday when she succumbed to the virus. Shruti Gavde, 13, died in Sassoon Hospital, Pune, barely hours after a pharmacist Sanjay Tilekar died there last night, the official from the State Swine Flu Control Room said.
Pune tops the list of casualties with five deaths so far followed by one death each in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Chennai.
The total swine flu infections now stand at 960 with 95 new cases reported Monday.