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Tuesday July 21, 2009

Flu Fever


It’s a relief to know that one of the nation’s beloved heroines, Cherie Blair, has had no problem in obtaining generous quantities of Tamiflu to treat her swine flu virus. If only the rest of the nation had such luck. Much as we hear gushing tales from the NHS that it is well equipped to deal with a major epidemic, it seems to be taking a mighty long time for sufferers to get hold of treatment and few are even being given appointments at their local surgeries to get a proper diagnosis.

The swine flu story is very perplexing. One of my London based friends cheerfully revealed a few weeks ago that her ten year old son’s entire class had gone down with swine flu. I e-mailed her to ask how she was coping with the shock. With some impatience she told me it was just like ordinary flu and every child in the class had made a total recovery. She laughed the whole thing off and blamed the World Health Organisation (WHO) for causing global panic. Yet in the media a very different picture is being painted, one which causes increasing unease. While some victims with underlying health problems (whatever that’s supposed to mean) die from the illness, there is always an unspoken and guilty sigh of relief. People comfort themselves with the thought that only those who are already weak and infirm might die. Now the media is hysterically revealing that healthy people of different ages have succumbed to swine flu and the public’s mood has changed. A mounting sense of fear is engulfing the UK.

What about Mallorca? I asked a local Mallorcan friend. She shrugged. She’d heard there were cases of swine flu but had no idea if the Baleares had enough supplies of Tamiflu and wasn’t very bothered either way. She dismissed the whole thing as an exaggerated media story. Let’s hope she’s right because any hope of an expat hunting out a sympathetic doctor for a pack of Tamiflu in the UK now, would be like searching the Guyanese jungle for a MacDonalds. We can but cross our fingers and toes and hope for the best.



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