Social activist Traffic Ramaswamy has approached the Madras high court, seeking a direction to the Union government to supply adequate swine flu test kits to the King Institute of Preventive Medicine.
The public interest litigation filed by Ramaswamy is likely to come up for hearing on August 17.
He sought a direction to the Chennai corporation to spray disinfectants in crowded and populous places in the city like bus stands, theaters at regular intervals and to take all necessary preventive measures to avoid spreading of infection. He also sought a direction to the state government to issue specific guidelines to school authorities regarding handling of pandemic swine flu infection.
According to Ramaswamy, since there was no specific guidelines on how to deal with this infection, if a student was suspected of being infected or found infected, the school authorities were put in dilemma whether to declare holiday to the school or not, thereby substantially increasing the risk of spreading the infection to other young children. The authorities were not taking any basic preventive measures like supplying protective masks, spraying disinfectants, clearing of infection prone areas.
The only authorised testing centre was King Institute. But there were no sufficient testing kits available at the centre, due to which numerous patients were waiting to get them tested and there was enormous delay in declaring the test results.
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