After floods, swine flu adds to misery of J & K residents

At a time when the situation in Jammu and Kashmir was limping back to normalcy and people were slowly rebuilding their lives after the devastating floods in September last year, the deadly swine flu virus has added more pain to their misery.

“Its like salt is being rubbed on our wounds. First it was the devastating floods and now it is this deadly virus, we are being hit by one disaster after another,” said Roshan Lal, a resident of Sarthal village in Udhampur district which was completely destroyed in last year’s floods.

The residents of the state seem to be staring at hard times again as six people have lost their lives and over 130 have tested positive for the virus. Some residents are now afraid to stay in the state and are shifting with their relatives to other parts of the country.

Sameer Iqbal who reached Jammu from Nagpur in Maharashtra said his family was too scared to stay in Kashmir and wanted to move out, “When I called my family a couple of days ago they were too scared to stay in Kashmir. They survived the devastating floods but now they don’t want to die because of this swine flu,” he said.

Firdous Ahmed, a resident of Srinagar who studies in Bangalore had arrived with some of his friends in Jammu via train said to take his family back with him. “We decided to take our families with us. Our families too have reached Jammu and from here we will return to Bangalore tomorrow,” Firdaus said.

A resident doctor at Government Medical College and Hospital Jammu, Dr Neeraj Sharma, advised people to exercise caution to avoid the virus. “The virus travels from one infected person to another; people need to take extra care of their health. Every cough and cold in not swine flu but still people needs to exercise every possible caution,” Sharma said.