Malaysia prepared to tackle H1N1 outbreak

Malaysia is well prepared to tackle the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak as it has adequate medical facilities to cope with the situation, Malaysian Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai has said.

Malaysia is well prepared to tackle the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak as it has adequate medical facilities to cope with the situation, Malaysian Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai has said.

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However, the public should not take the outbreak lightly as there was a possibility of the situation reaching “sustained local transmission”, he told the Lower House of Malaysian Parliament on Tuesday.

“As such, we have to cooperate closely to fight the outbreak. The pandemic is here to stay and can be here for months. And we have to work together to fight it,” he said.

Liow said Malaysia was still under the containment measure phase of the National Pandemic Preparedness Plan (NPPP), and had yet to go into the mitigation phase.

“Everything is outlined in the NPPP. While there is local transmission, the disease is still under control because we know the source of infection and we are able to detect the patient. The contact point can still be traced,” he said.

Liow said if the swine flu reached the stage of sustained local transmission “we will have to close down most of the schools within the community and proceed with social distancing measures”.

He said that if the situation escalated to such a level, exit screening points in the infected community would be established even though it was not a recommendation of the World Health Organisation in handling the situation.