Biscuits, tea and ‘swine flu’.

The wonderful world of locum medicine has made me a swine flu expert folks (at least for the week anyway).

I accepted some shifts working in the Health protection unit alongside the public health bods. After a 5 min briefing I was ready to man the phones and provide expert advice to patients, and less knowledgeful docs (the last comment is of course sarcastic!).

I quickly got into the hang of things….’Yes…missus blogs it is safer if you keep little Tommy out of school until he recovers’……..’ohhh rite Dr X you want to prophylactically treat the household contacts of a proven swine flu case…..I think thats acceptable’. I think you get the idea.

Interspersed with telephone consults we were readily provided with sandwiches, tea, coffee fruit and biscuits. I got to envy the public health docs, they know how to look after themselves (and they had nice offices and facilities to boot).

So what can I tell you?

Well, the vast majority of cases of swine flu are mild, despite it spreading like wild fire. In fact I’m sure I’ve had it myself at some point but didn’t notice it!!

Tamiflu, the drug being used for treamtent and prophylaxsis only shortens duration of symptoms by about 24 hours and for max effect is best taken in the first 24-48 hours. However, with the mass hysteria currently surrounding the public everybody and their dog seems to be getting it. This is bad news, come winter if we get a new wave of it, the virus may have developed resistance to the drug. The people with reduced immunity and chronic disease could be worst hit.

The advice and policy strategy is changing on a daily basis, so todays advice and recommendations may be very quickly supersecded.

Personally, a pandemic like this is a once in a lifetime event, and it feels weird to be suddenly stuck in the middle of it. I guess its another stage in my nomadic existence as a locum over the last few years.