As we wait in fear of the virus . . .

As swine flu cases spread in Asia and other countries fears of pandemic are becoming a reality. With more than 11,000 confirmed cases in various countries plus 85 fatalities the WHO has urged authorities to remain vigilant and to take necessary measures to prevent the spread of A(H1N1) virus.

Here in the Philippines DOH people are on the alert 24 hours as they keep watch on incoming travelers from countries with reported cases. How effective are the preventive steps they have taken? Now one case has already been discovered. Will there be more?

In Asia the virus has already infiltrated Japan and Korea, both countries with top of the line health services. Will there be more cases in this country? If there will be, God forbid, its impact would be like a wildlife because endemic poverty is an excellent culture medium of diseases.

As threat of the virus becomes more imminent what contingency measures have been taken by the government? Is it sourcing millions even billions of pesos for disaster preparedness. Suppose this type of influenza strikes an urban center like Manila or Cebu City, are there adequate hospital facilities to house the afflicted? Are there enough health personnel to minister to the sick? What about medicine, is this available in sufficient quantities just in case thousands would become ill simultaneously? If most of the members of a family or barangay get afflicted at the same time, who will take care of them? Most likely they would die of hunger or thirst, not of the disease.

Highly contagious, what should be done to control the ravages of the virus from place to place? What role should local government play in tandem with the national government? What about the NGOs, where would they come in?

Questions like these should keep our national leaders awake at night. Or are they? There’s a cabinet man in-charge of disaster preparedness. But it seems his current obsession is his candidacy and therefore his kind of preparedness is off-tangent to the needs of the hour. There are our legislators who are supposed to be the guardians of the people’s welfare. But right now Chacha is the goblin in the minds of Congressmen while mudslinging is the gadfly of Senators.

If anything else, a massive information campaign should have been waged at this time on this impending epidemic. People should have been oriented on the nature of flu infection, the cause of infection, its syndromes and what counter measures to take. For its part, the Food and Drug bureau should have taken a break-neck research on chemicals or substances that can stymie the impact of A(H1N1) upon the body. That office has been quick to approve the sale of herbals for various ailments, despite uncertainty of their therapeutic benefits. Now, can it not single out which of these concoctions can be useful to flu victims?

With the first sign of the virus already in our shores, we cannot help but lift our hearts to the Almighty and ask: “Lord, is this the chastisement you mentioned to Veronica Lueken in 1978?”

For those who have not heard of her, Veronica Lueken was the visionary to whom our Lord Jesus and Our Lady appeared in a series of apparitions from 1968 to 1995 in Bayside, New York. In one of such apparitions on February 10, 1978 Jesus spoke thus: “You who… choose to set yourself up by power and the gathering of the world’s money to control the masses, you will find that all of you power and all of your volumes of gold and silver cannot hold back the heavens as they descend upon you in a just chastisement…”

Perhaps swine flu is only one of the chastisements Our Lord was speaking of. In the last few decades there have been the HIV-AIDS, the Ebola virus, the bird flu or SARS all of which were caused by new types of viruses. Now comes swine flu for which there is no specific cure. Add to these the current global financial melt-down and economic dislocation plus flood, famine, bush fires occurring in alarming frequency and one gets a good idea of the kind of divine punishment the Lord was talking about.

Fear is of course our immediate reaction to these threats to our survival. In the midst of fear, however, we should remember these words of the Lord before his Ascension: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Truly, prayers, as encouraged now by the Archdiocese of Cebu, could be our one source of protection.

* * *

Email: [email protected]