Mumbai: Is the noise around swine flu drowning out sheer logic? A 28-year-old doctor who does not want to be identified thinks so.
A resident doctor at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai, he has tuberculosis -- a disease that kills thousands of Indians every day.
"I could not believe I could get TB and that too such a virulent type. It was very troublesome and painful," he said.
According to data released by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, someone dies of TB in India every minute; cancer kills 800 every day. Compared to that, swine flu has just killed two people so far in three months.
"There are many diseases like TB that have been killing people much more than swine flu. But it's perhaps newness that has panicked people," said Dr Jairaj Thanekar, executive health officer, BMC.
Epidemologists say that less than 10 per cent of those being tested for the virus have actually tested positive for it. And that goes to show there's cause for restraint and also a need to show as much or more concern for deadlier diseases.