P. Singh, Tripura government's principal secretary in charge of the health department.

Indian Medical Association (IMA) in association with All Tripura government doctors Association held a seminar in Agartala Wednesday.

'Swine flu was noticed first in 1918 and that time it was called Spanish flu, which had spread globally killing over 50 million people in various countries including India,' said expert Subrata Baidya.

Baidya told the seminar that in 1919, over 700,000 people had fallen victim in India.

Doctors and experts while addressing the seminar said that in India two people die of tuberculosis every three minutes, 6,301 die daily due to heart trouble. While diabetes claims the lives of 2,740 daily, about 290 people die due to tobacco-related diseases every day. So no panic should be created over influenza A (H1N1), which is just one of the many viruses in the environment.

A public awareness meeting was convened at Tura, in West Garo Hills District of Meghalaya Wednesday to discuss the preparatory and precautionary measures to sensitise the medical officers, health workers and the media in handling the situation.

'The situation was creating more panic than the actual ground reality,' said Deputy Commissioner of West Garo Hills Sanjay Goyal.

Goyal stressed the need to sensitise the people about the disease, although no case has been detected in the remote district so far.

Several teams of experts from the central health ministry are now visiting the northeastern states to train doctors and to supervise the treatment facilities developed and available in these states.

'Following the direction of the union health ministry, one hospital in each district of the seven northeastern states has been equipped to treat patients infected with H1N1 virus,' said A.C. Dey, one of the experts from New Delhi.