Prevention is better than cure

The government should have prepared a contingency plan to protect citizens from this pandemic long ago and all hospitals should have been equipped with medicines and designated wards for H1N1 positive patients.

Though Samar Halarnkar, in India’s got the flu (Maha Bharat, August 10), rightly says that there’s no reason to panic, his arguments cannot be explained to mothers of young children. The government should have prepared a contingency plan to protect citizens from this pandemic long ago and all hospitals should have been equipped with medicines and designated wards for H1N1 positive patients. There’s so much of panic in the country because these measures were not taken at the right time.