How not to deal with Swine Flu - or anything else

I was deeply concerned to read posts by the NHS Blog Doctor and Guido Fawkes about how inquiries about Paul Staines' daughter were dealt with by his local NHS when she developed a fever.

"Doctor Crippen" writes that

"I am ashamed to say that swine flu is being seen by some of my cynical colleagues as a perfect excuse with which to fob off a large number of patients."

As he points out, during the current fuss about swine flu, "other illnesses continue as normal. Children still get meningitis, and may well present with high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough. Children still get bacterial pneumonia and may well present with high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough. Children still get pyelonephritis (kidney infections) and may well present with high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough. Children still get acute appendicitis and may well present with high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough. Children still get acute leukaemia and may well present with high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough."

Unfortunately the symptoms which small children present when they get ill can be very similar for a wide variety of illnesses, some minor, some presenting a risk of permanent injury, and some life-threatening. That's why we must avoid the trap of diagnosing over the phone that every child with a fever has swine flu, prescribing Tamiflu, and assuming that this will deal with it.

Otherwise as he points out, we will have a tragedy like this:

“Mrs Jones phoned the GP/the hospital/the walk-in centre and was told over the telephone that her daughter, Mary, had swine flu. They left out a prescription for Tamiflu but Mary died the next day from meningococcal septicaemia.”

You can read the NHS blog doctor's comments in full here, and he expresses his disapproval of some of his NHS colleagues a lot more strongly than I have.