Lashing out at state governments for “forgetting their duty” and not doing enough to combat swine flu, Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday said the Centre was stretching itself to the maximum to contain the disease.

“We (Centre) can go to a point, don’t expect us to go beyond a point,” he said addressing state health ministers at a review meeting of the National Rural Health Mission.

“This is the maximum limit we could stretch ourselves. Beyond this, the state governments should shoulder their responsibility which they haven’t done,” he said.

Contending that it was the Centre which was doing everything, including contact tracing, procuring medicines, looking for vaccines and training doctors, he said, the states have forgotten their duty.

While the Central officers are working so hard, “I would expect state level officer to at least sit till 10pm and give some report and do something. It is because of our intervention at the national level that we have succeeded so far.”

“There is a limit for ministry of health to do this contact tracing and treating. I would request all the ministries and secretaries to be active and identify the hospitals,” Azad said.

Soon after Azad finished his speech, Gujarat health minister J.N. Vyas commented that as a federal minister he should not have made the remarks against state governments.

To this, Azad replied that he was not naming any state and some states had indeed done good work.