For the past few weeks there is heightened discussion on Swine Flu in India. All forms of media are covering it in a feverish pitch. While it is good to educate people about an infectious disease and its means of prevention, I wonder why single out this particular disease. One look at statistics would tell us that there are far more fatalities through other diseases in India.
HIV-AIDS – more than 4 million carriers and half-million deaths
TUBERCULOSIS (TB) – two deaths occur every three minutes
HEPATITIS B Virus – more than 50 million carriers and 1% of adult deaths annually
CARDIOVASCULAR Diseases – five million deaths annually
ROAD ACCIDENTS – around 1.3 million deaths annually
Tuberculosis (TB), which is supposedly a curable disease, has the highest fatality rate in India, much ahead of AIDS, Malaria or Hepatitis B. But there hasn’t been much media coverage on such diseases. Any attempt to educate people is through government or medical channels.
One possible explanation that I can come up with is that some of them are lifestyle diseases (like AIDS, Cardiovascular diseases), while some others are controllable. Hence public does not panic even though the mortality rates are higher. New diseases, especially the ones which do not have a vaccine or a cure, get higher attention since lack of knowledge leads to more apprehension. Given the increasing role of media in taking up public causes, the focus is currently on swine flu.
Does media coverage help to create awareness or unnecessary panic in the public? Both. But the actual message does not reach those who are below poverty line or those who are illiterate or those in the rural areas with not much access to the media. People do not stop travelling or going to public places or celebrate festivals in a group which are the major methods of mass transmission of the disease. So what purpose does the coverage serve? Much has been done to create awareness on AIDS, yet the rate of transmission has not been contained till date in India. Similar thing will happen in the case of Swine flu as well despite the media coverage.
Till a vaccine or a cure has been released in the market for swine flu, it will continue to be in news and then as is the case with other issues, public memory will fade and people will move on to bother about something else.
