UAE | Health
Flu takes the pleasure away from vacationing expats
Gulf News designer recounts how his plans to watch his favourite soccer team play went awry with the viral scare.
- By Mahmood Saberi, Senior Reporter
- Published: 22:51 May 7, 2009
Dubai: Alex Belman went home to Mexico City for his annual vacation early April and never imagined that he would be stuck at home the whole time and scared to go to watch his favourite soccer team play.
"I watched TV and played with my kids," said the senior designer with Gulf News who returned to work last week.
"The restaurants were closed and the stadium stands were empty," he said.
"Every week we usually have 20 matches taking place," he said.
The swine flu took its toll in various ways in his beleaguered country which was already reeling under recessionary pressures.
A couple of weeks after he arrived in Mexico City to spend time with his wife and two kids, the media warnings started about the virus, H1N1, a variant of the bird flu.
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"We took the usual precautions liking washing hands, wearing face masks and keeping away from cinemas and shopping malls," he said.
"It was pretty boring. Nobody got into a panic," he said, "everyone was well informed."
But he added that the hospitals ran out of face masks and people had to buy their own from pharmacies. "Some made their own masks," he said. "The masks are of no use and are just for psychological reasons."
Belman said his country's main goal is to rid the country of this virus as people want to get back on the economic track. He said it was stupid that people are culling pigs. "You don't get the flu from eating pork," he pointed out.
News agency pictures showed the Mexicans getting fed up of the whole thing and making fashionable face masks. According to reports, people travelling to other provinces from Mexico City were attacked by scared people as it was in Mexico City that first swine flu cases were detected.
His children missed three weeks of school and he hoped that the missed classes will be made up during the summer vacations. Belman said everything's in control now. "There are not so many cases now," he said.
When leaving for Dubai, Belman was asked to sign a declaration at Mexico City Airport that he was free from flu since the past 10 days.
"We went through a [thermal] scanner and the whole procedure took about 30 minutes," he said.
According to reports, some Asian countries are causing a diplomatic row by holding Mexican tourists in quarantine.
As there is no direct flight between Dubai and Mexico, Belman made a stopover at London. "Nobody asked me about my health [at Heathrow]," he said.
Even at Dubai Airport he passed through without going through the thermal scanner.
Belman is taking a few days off and staying at home as a precaution. The incubation period of the flu is about five days.
"I am feeling fine," he said. There are about 500 Mexicans in the UAE .
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