WHO issues a preliminary warning against MERS threat to India

As reported by the news wire agency, Press Trust of India, Top WHO official Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of WHO (South-East Asia Region), New Delhi urged India 'to enhance surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections, focus on early diagnosis, and step up infection prevention and control procedures in health-care facilities'.

She triggered an alarm by saying, "Strong health systems using strict infection control measures would be the key to prevent the spread of the virus and protect healthcare workers and others."

Unfortunately, there is no immediate medical remedy to the problem except some strong observations made by the WHO to analyse the outbreak. The health organisation is stated to have said the virus affects people who are the in direct contact with such patients, or are the clinical care takers. This leads to a very sensitive situation for a country like India where an outbreak can multiply by unimaginable proportions, given the huge travelers from the Middle East-the epicenter of MERS virus. There are however, growing fears that the MERS virus could find its way to India after the Haj pilgrimage later.

As reported by the PTI, any person suffering from MERS will show signs of common cold except that this deadly virus has claimed many lives. Some of the common signs such as cough followed by fever and shortness of breath are the initial few symptoms of the virus infection. In extreme cases, the infection may lead to pneumonia and kidney failure as severe symptoms. At the moment, recording the travel case history including a close scrutiny of the medical records is important to curb the spread.

The original host of MERS virus is supposed to be camels and in 2012, it first showed up in Saudi Arabia and since then over 1200 cases have been reported worldwide and about 500 people have died because of this new infection. The virus has a high mortality rate of 36 per cent (as per the statistics and figures reported by PTI).