Indian authorities have decided to screen all travellers arriving from the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, France and New Zealand and advised avoiding "non-essential" travel to these countries in a bid to combat the lethal swine flu.

Doctors will be deployed at nine airports across the country making it mandatory for all those arriving from the flu-hit countries to undergo checks for fever and throat infection.

At the Mumbai and Delhi airports, a team of 32 doctors is being put in place and screening will start Thursday, 30 April.

The other airports indentified for mandatory check-ups are Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Jaipur and Goa.

Health ministry officials said that throat swabs would be taken and blood samples collected of travellers who complain of upper respiratory tract diseases and fever. Airport authorities, however, said they are still in the dark and are yet to gear up for these checks. 

Health ministry officials said they were also trying to track down all passengers who have come in from Mexico into the country in the past 10 days to check them out for similar influenza symptoms. A request has been made by the health ministry to the immigration department for details of all such passengers, so that doctors can visit their local addresses.

Doctors clarified that there is no risk of the flu from eating pork and pork products, including ham, salami and sausages.

Four Indian laboratories - the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Delhi, National Institute of Virology (Pune), National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (Kolkata) and Regional Medical Research Centre (Dibrugarh) - have been put on high alert to test human samples for H1N1 infection. 

Dr V M Katoch, secretary of India's department of health research, said there were no suspected cases of H1N1 infection in India, either in animals or humans. "However, our main focus now is to combat human importation of the virus into India. Human to human transmission of this new virus, with altered genes, has been confirmed by WHO," Dr Katoch said. 

The ministry's joint secretary, Vineet Chaudhry, said: "We already have airport health officers and quarantine facilities. We are just augmenting personnel in heavy traffic airports to scan every passenger. Delhi and Mumbai airports, where the maximum number of international flights touch down, will have majority of the doctors. Delhi will have 32 doctors, most of whom were trained during the SARS and bird flu outbreaks in India, working between eight shifts." 

Chaudhry said the ministry had finished drafting directives to airlines which will inform passengers about the precautionary measures India was taking at airports against swine flu. 

Passengers will be given two forms - one will be a voluntary declaration from the passenger on the history of their exposure to animals and symptoms of influenza illness. The second form will be retained by the passenger which will tell them where to contact in case they develop symptoms in the next 10 days. 

Two round-the-clock toll free numbers - 1075 and 23921401 - have also been put in place for the public to report influenza like illnesses.

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