NHS Direct is front line in Crisis Managing the Flu situation, yet its advice on Swine flu seems to be ridiculous in the extreme. Click HERE to go onto the symptom checker.
If you had a loved one in bed with a bad cold (not the flu just a cold), they had not been overseas, they had no major symptoms other than a very painful headache and felt very sleepy (like everyone with a cold) its answer is call 999!!!
Should things escalate even slightly the 999 service and Ambulance Service will be overwhelmed.
22 comments:
I phoned the NHS swine flu helpline but all I got was crackling.
*gets coat*
I tired to ring it but there was crackling on the line.
Gordo likes to play the great Statesman. All he has done, by talking about flu, has started a panic.
If this strain becomes common, in human to human transmission, people will die, but there again, about 6,000 people die of flu every single year!
Perhaps a lot more people will get it, perhaps not. The facts are that so far, nobody knows what will happen.
Best leave it and concentrate on more pressing and potentially catastrophic issues like the economic health of this country.
The key here is the 'very bad headache' which is not symptomatic of a normal cold or flu but of something much more serious and urgent such as a cerebral haemorrhage.
We're H-1-N-1-A! We're H-1-N-1-A! We know we are. We're sure we are. We're We're H-1-N-1-A!
Please to be stopping calling this swine flu.
Very frightened look when summer sneezed outside ASDA last night. Perhaps I should have oinked too?
Seriously Iain, a cold with a banging headache and drowsiness - serious enough to merit staying in bed on a lovely summer day - is surely worth checking out.
Contagious, infectious, better safe than sorry.
Classic Nu Labour advice. I have a migraine today so according to this must CALL 99 immediately instead of taking 2 tablets and lying down.
The issue is blame management,. Perhaps 1 in 10000 with the symptoms might have the serious flu. But if NHS Direct get it wrong they will be blamed for that 1 in 10000 getting very sick or dying (as they will anyway).
But if they tell them to call 999 - then the responsibility and blame passes to the LOCAL Ambulance Services protecing DoH and the NHS Direct
NHS Direct? No thanks. Chocolate and teapot come to mind from my experience.
NHS, the 1945 model good for a decade cannot even handle routine Aand E cases. We very easily dish out praises to all doctors and nurses in primary and secondary care services. I have personal tales to tell how even the best tertiary specialist hospitals have problems in handling patients who come for routine treatment. NHS is not working like Indian Railways. Pandemic? The NHS model, overmanned with admin staff, centralised, bureacratic, very often ineefficient slow in responding like the Indian Railways
will soon be overwhelmed. Best to release the swine flu drug through GP surgeries so that the GPs who aren't working that hard and pampered with bloated salaries can do a bit more work looking after patients when the necessity arises. NHS direct is crap and is set up to placate BMA as its members-the GPs do not want to be bothered with patients during out-of-hours. Tens of billions pured into the old NHS model by Brown was swallowed by GPs and consultants pay and they do less work than before.
NHS direct is a dreadful service whose answer to anything other than a cut finger is to relate your symptoms to having a heart attack and then in most cases "DIAL 999".
I was put on medication a few years ago and after the first evening my heat raced for no apprent reason, my head felt like it was going to explode, I was dizzy and felt nauseaus. The advice given by the woman on the other end of the phone, who seemed terribly put out that I'd had the nerve to call, was, "just keep taking them and see what happens." I went back to the doctors the next day where it was immediately diagnosed as an allergic reaction to the medication, which if left untreated much longer could have killed me.
So, who exactly are the people on the other end of the phone?
It is interesting how they describe the symptoms of UK swine flu sufferes as 'mild'.
Flu means bed-ridden with fatigue and high fever. Not what I'd call mild.
98 people a day die from normal flu related complications in the US alone. I think the coverage is slightly sensationalistic
The Scotsman reports the following about the visit to NHS Direct by the " World Savior"
Brown:
"On a visit to an NHS Direct call centre in Beckenham, south east London, the Prime Minister said the advice line was coping well with demand".
If you really feel the need for intimate relations with pigs, wear a condom. Better safe than sorry.
The Penguin
The reason people who are "feeling sleepy" are directed to ring 999 is that confusion and drowsiness is one of the symptoms of meningitis. And if someone is actaully suffering from meningitis, you do want them to ring 999.
The average worried patient reading the internet isn't able to distinguish meningitis symptoms from flu symptoms - so it would be silly of NHS Direct to ask them to.
You're right to highlight the ridiculous system.
However, I don't know how many unnecessary calls to ambulances result from people who've looked at the NHS Direct website. Perhaps it reduces the number of 999 calls.
After all, worried people have a regrettable tendency to dial 999 for cut fingers, tickly coughs, bee stings, and other eminently self-treatable medical problems, internet or no internet.
Because these are the symptoms of meningitis???
reassuring to know that Iain is an expert on infectious diseases as well!
U dirty bastards that is why you should be a vegetarian. The pigs have been inbreeding and you dirty bastards have been eating their spunk. haha
They are idiots. The difference between influenza with a 1-5% mortality rate and a bad cold with a mortality rate tending to zero is dramatic. Muscle cramps and seriously elevated fever/temperature with a 10-14 day duration for 'flu (felling very very ill as it is a viral intoxication that occurs) and a cold that lasts around 7 days.
Try to get some Tamiflu and take as soon as the symptoms begin. also take zinc supplements. This helps to stop the virus entering the cells lining the bronchi.
what about hay fever? Do you reckon when I start sneezing in public in June as i always do I will be carted off and imprisoned?
It's a serious point as although summer is not influenza season it's definitely sneezing season and as the ad suggests sneezers may be harbouring globe destroying viruses.
After 12 years of Socialism the people have been conditioned not to think for themselves (God Forbid) and Gordo thinks they are in a panicky quandry (bit like him really) so he is dashing here there and everywhere to save people (again) so they will realise he IS the saviour and they`ll all vote for him (again)....
God I must have got this flu badly..best ring NHD Direct methinks..
We're not being told the truth here in the States. The numbers are being deliberately under reported as testing is actually being discouraged. While the "spin" is that this is a "mild" flu, that is only true if treated with Tamiflu within 48 hours. If it spreads as quickly as it is spreading now, health services will quickly be overwhelmed. Read the Anderson Cooper interview with a 14 year old in New York. Her father said she looked like a truck had run over her. She was unable to move and had difficulty breathing with a 103 F. temperature. Once she took the Tamiflu the symptoms subsided quickly. My take on it is that they know they cannot control the spread of the disease any longer, so the only thing they can hope to control is the sense of panic. Well, by the end of May we may see both out of control.
We need to know a lot more about this disease and how it is changing. Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.
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