Medical Doctors Feared Spaniard Over H1N1

So like the intelligent people we like to think we have evolved into...A Spaniard man was put in a mental ward over flu fears.

I know, your worst nightmare....

Spaniard Mans Ordeal From Reuters

A Spanish man who sought treatment for a rash found himself locked in a mental ward by doctors concerned he had contracted a deadly flu on holiday in Mexico.

The unnamed man told Spanish newspaper El Pais how he was confined for three days and warned that if he tried to leave he could face legal action under rules to control epidemics, invoked in response to a flu virus that has killed 26 people in Mexico.

When the doctor learned the man had been to Mexico he referred him to Madrid's Carlos III hospital, where staff were so afraid of the virus that they instructed the patient on how to take his own temperature from behind a window.

"It took me two days to learn how to read the mercury thermometer. They'd tell me over the telephone 'Turn it that way and you'll be able to see it,'" the man said.

Although the patient turned out to have been healthy all along, he suffered because of the heating in his room, which had the windows permanently locked.

"I thought it was because of infection, because they were afraid the virus might get out through the window, but it turned out that I was in a ward reserved for prisoners and mental patients," he told El Pais.



"I was sweating like a fried chicken," he said, describing his relief at his release following days in which he had not been allowed visitors. Spanish authorities have confirmed 57 cases of the flu virus, and another 63 are under observation.

No spokesman for Carlos III was immediately available to comment on the report.