Devolution has provided an interesting comparison of how different governments approach the National Health Service - and the arrival of swine flu has pointed out just how great those differences can be. 

All the main political parties in Scotland have acknowledged that the Scottish Government has been prompt, detailed and comprehensive in the information it has made public. Just as important is the honest and open attitude the SNP’s minister for health, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Chief Medical Officer Dr Harry Burns, have taken with the media. If they’re still waiting for information, they say so. If something isn’t known, they admit it.   If the situation suddenly changes they tell us, even recalling an entire room full of journalists ten minutes after a press conference had just ended because they’d just got test results back on another confirmed case.

Journalists in Scotland have been given the number infected, the number in hospital, breakdowns by health board area and rolling totals. Cases were split into "possibles" and "probables", depending on the state of their test results, and at the height of the crisis all this was updated daily.
 
Of course as a journalist, I always want more. It would have been useful to have breakdowns of the ages of all those infected, not just those in hospital. It was also difficult to find out how the outbreak compared to a typical flu season – possibly because of differences in the way the figures are collected.
 
But as time went on, we all started asking the same question. "Where is the Department of Health?"   For a few days our Scottish minister seemed to take on the role of the UK’s spokesperson as her daily briefings were transmitted live on news channels.   
 
Not only were there hardly any briefings from the Department of Health, but there were woefully few interviews with anyone – the Secretary of State, the Chief Medical Officer or even a scientific adviser.   Whilst their Scottish counterparts made time to explain the finer details to journalists in Edinburgh, my colleagues in London began to grumble that we had more information than they did.
 
As the tally of people in hospital in Scotland increased, I was repeatedly asked on air: “Why are there so many serious cases in Scotland?”  It was difficult to answer, especially as the Scottish health department had hinted to me off-the-record that Scotland wasn’t, in fact, alone and we’d soon hear of similar cases in England.  
 
Days went by with no word on hospitalised patients from the Health Protection Agency or the Department of Health.   Reported cases began to drip into local newsrooms though: we learned there were two in hospital in Birmingham.  Finally, eventually, the Department of Health announced 28 people had been admitted to hospital in England over preceding days.   28!
 
Scotland has its own broadsheet newspapers and a tabloid, as well as Scottish editions of UK-wide publications.   During the whole episode I saw relatively few sensationalist reports in the Scottish media. In fact the standard of reporting here was probably more balanced than in the English media.   Headline writers didn’t need to spin the facts – there was plenty of juicy accurate material to work with. 
 
The media is often blamed for sensationalising the news. Sometimes that criticism is fair.   But, faced with a public health crisis, the audience want information and want it now.  If you don’t give us the tools, how do you expect us to do the job?  
 
Eleanor Bradford is Health Correspondent, BBC Scotland