Vadodara's gates open for swine flu patients

Vadodara: It seems Vadodara authorities are not bothered about H1N1 cases entering the city from neighbouring Maharashtra where Pune, with nearly 300 positive cases, is one of the worst-affected cities due to swine flu. Be it at city's Harni airport, railway station or bus depots of Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC), passengers arriving are neither screened nor monitored. Meanwhile, a 19-year-old student who studies in Pune and was in the city for vacation was referred to SSG Hospital on Wednesday for a suspected case of swine flu.
While Ahmedabad airport, at least, has some equipment to conduct the test, Vadodara airport has none. In fact, a source at Harni airport told TOI that it was only on Wednesday morning that he noticed a handful of CISF personnel wearing masks. Vadodara has close links to Pune, both in terms of the inter-connected Maharashtrian population and because of hundreds of youngsters from Vadodara either studying or working in IT firms there.
Officials of Airports Authority of India (AAI) admitted that they don't have any equipment to monitor or screen such passengers. "As a domestic airport, we do not have any international flight landing here. But various airlines, themselves, are adopting measures to screen passengers," said a top official of AAI.
"Forget about screening around 650 passengers who land at the airport from Delhi and Mumbai, even the staff isn't equipped with any protective gear," said an official working with an airline company. "There are many passengers who take connecting flights from Pune on the Mumbai-Vadodara route, but there is no way we can screen them." They are eight daily flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Vadodara airport.
12/08/09 Prashant Rupera/Times of India

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Aug 2009