After confirming another two cases of influenza A/H1N1 on Thursday, Nepal has come up with new strategic mechanism to contain the virus from spreading.

In collaboration with the United Nations children's Fund (UNICEF), the new plan is being adopted to cover media campaign to raise public awareness against the disease.

"By launching a new strategy, we are providing a tool to our people to fight against the disease through the use of information, education and communication, this is possible," Dr Senendra Raj Upreti, Director of Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) said on Thursday.

Recently Nepal is cooperating with United States Agency for International Development (USAID), International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC), UNICEF, Humanitarian Pandemic Preparedness (H2P), Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), Save the Children Nepal and some local level organization to disseminate information to warn people in community level.

The meeting held between the government and supporting organizations on Thursday concluded to use more television commercials, radio jingles, newspapers and periodicals and printing posters to improve awareness of people.

"Television commercials and radio jingles will be of one minute length informing people about what is the disease, how to cautious and where to contact if symptoms were found," said Laxmi Raman Ban, Director of National Health Education, Information and Communication Center.

World Health Organization (WHO) is also assisting Nepal to train manpower to cope with pandemic.

Besides communication, Nepal has strengthened its strategy in dealing with visitors coming from affected nations.

The government has been screening Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in capital Kathmandu since two months ago. Now it intensified its surveillance by moving the health desk that were set up at the immigration office in TIA to the "C" area.

"C" area is the area where passengers first step on after they arrive at airport. The changes has been made fully functioning from Thursday for better monitoring.

According to Upreti, health team at TIA screens almost 2,500 people everyday in the airport. The average number of people arriving in Nepal is around 2,500 from different flights in a day.

"We try to detect whether they are symptomatic or not, especially those people from affected countries like Mexico, the United States, Britain, and others," said Upreti.

Nepal has confirmed five cases of A/H1N1 up to now. The first case of infection in three people was confirmed on June 29 whereas two more cases was reported on Thursday.

(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2009)