On the WHO | Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 website:
Dr Keiji Fukuda briefed Geneva-based journalists on the upcoming expert review of the global response to the H1N1 pandemic and functioning of the International Health Regulations, an agreement among countries on how to handle global health threats.
You can listen to the press conference as an audio file.
Via the Daily Graphic: Swine Flu Hits Achimota Basic School. Excerpt:
The H1N1 flu, otherwise known as swine flu, does not seem to go away, with the Achimota Basic School being its latest destination.
Three cases of the H1N1 flu have compelled the authorities to close down the school for two weeks. The Lincoln Community School in Accra was the first to have been hit by the swine flu in the latter part of last year. Since then, it has spread to the Okuapemman Senior High School in the Eastern Region, the Merton Primary in Accra and the Tema Parents School.
At the Achimota Basic School, students in the boarding house have been asked to stay at home until April 6, 2010 to allow for the fumigation of the school.
The Headmaster, Mr Frank Armah, told an Accra FM station that the school was closed down on the directive of the Director of Basic Education at the Ministry of Education, Mr Stephen Adu.
Pupils in the Primary and the Junior High School departments were sent home at the weekend after a test at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical and Research (NMIMR) had confirmed that three children had been infected with the swine flu.
The school had been deserted when the Daily Graphic visited the place yesterday, with no sign of any primary or JHS student being around. Only students of the senior high school could be seen around.
Via allAfrica.com, a report from Vanguard: Nigeria: Swine Flu Knocks Off National Cricket Team’s Tour of Ghana. Excerpt:
The much-hyped playing tour of Ghana to have been embarked upon by the national cricket team has been knocked off by the sudden outbreak of Swine Flu in that country.
Sports Vanguard gathered that the tour was called off at the instance of the Ghana Cricket Association which based its decision on the incidence of H1N1 Swine Flu in Achimota College.
In a terse text message by the Chairman of the Ghana Cricket Association, Prince Daniel Vanderpuye-Orgle, to the President of the Nigeria Cricket Association, Kwesi Sagoe, he said inter alia “Sorry we have postponed the cricket tour due to the outbreak of H1N1 swine flu in Achimota school.” Incidentally, Achimota was the proposed host to matches of the tour.
President of the Nigeria Cricket Federation, Kwesi Sagoe, confirmed the story, remarking that “Achimota College is where we were supposed to play. Even if we took the matches away from Achimota, the bulk of Ghana national team players still come from Achimota. We don’t want to take chances and end up importing swine flu into our country, Nigeria.”
Via the Sydney Morning Herald: Swine flu still a significant risk, warn doctors. Excerpt:
Australian flu experts have hit back at claims the world overreacted to the swine flu pandemic last year, urging people to remain vigilant about the virus.
Alan Hampson, chairman of the Influenza Specialist Group, said claims the World Health Organisation overreacted to swine flu were “absolute nonsense” and it still posed a significant risk to millions of Australians.
The British Labour MP Paul Flynn, who is vice-chairman of the Council of Europe’s health committee, said in a draft report that the World Health Organisation response to swine flu had led to a decline in public confidence in influenza warnings.
Last May some experts predicted there would be up to 25,000 deaths from swine flu in Australia. The figure was closer to 200. Only 7.9 million out of 21 million doses of the swine flu vaccine have so far been ordered by GPs. Now that the seasonal flu vaccine, which includes swine flu, has become available many doses may be wasted.
Dr Hampson said swine flu still posed a threat to high-risk groups including pregnant women, people over 65, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged over 15 and people with chronic medical conditions such as severe asthma or diabetes.
The federal government has committed to providing more than 5 million free seasonal flu vaccines, including about 2.2 million doses for people in high-risk groups who were otherwise not eligible for a free vaccine.
Via the Calgary Herald: Alberta hit hard by H1N1 deaths during pandemic. Excerpt:
According to statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada, 71 people with H1N1 died in Alberta. That’s about 19.1 deaths per million people.
In all of Canada, there were 429 deaths; about 12.6 per million people. Hospitalization rates also showed a similar trend, with more Albertans per million admitted than compared to the country as a whole.
But we were far more prepared for a pandemic than we would have been just 15 years ago, according to Jim Dickinson, a University of Calgary professor who runs Alberta’s influenza surveillance program.
That’s because the rise of bird flu drew serious concern and efforts were made to plan for such a pandemic.
But bird flu is not the same as H1N1 and requires a different response, Dickinson says. While H1N1 spreads more easily, but is less often fatal, bird flu is far more often fatal, but with less transmission, he said.
With bird flu, if you have a few people getting very ill, you can “contain” around them. But H1N1, while less lethal, spread much more widely, needing a different set of precautions, he said.
“Fortunately, some of the previous planning could be used, but some of it had to be changed because it was a different threat,” Dickinson said.
“And the next time, guess what, it’s going to be a different threat.”
Via The Hindu: “Slow-down in Delhi swine flu cases,” Excerpt:
The Capital seems to have bid a very welcome good bye to swine flu with the State Health Department stating that almost no cases of the flu are being reported now.
Breathing easy after having battled swine flu for several months, the city seems to have developed resistance to the swine flu virus claim medical experts.
“For several weeks now we haven’t had cases of swine flu being reported in city. Swine flu cases reported have been tapering off since the beginning of this year and has been zero for nearly all of this month. Of course, we are relieved with the slow-down in the number of cases. Our team of experts have attributed this slow-down to people developing resistance to swine flu,” said a senior Delhi Government health official.
Via The Guardian: WHO accused of losing public confidence over flu pandemic. Excerpt:
The World Health Organisation and other public health bodies have “gambled away” public confidence by overstating the dangers of the flu pandemic, according to a draft report to the Council of Europe.
The report, by the Labour MP Paul Flynn, vice chair of the council’s health committee, says that a loss of credibility could endanger lives.
“This decline in confidence could be risky in the future,” says the report, seen by the Guardian.
“When the next pandemic arises many persons may not give full credibility to recommendations put forward by WHO and other bodies. They may refuse to be vaccinated and may put their own health and lives at risk.”
In Britain, says Flynn, the discrepancy between the estimate of the numbers of people who would die from flu and the reality was dramatic.
“In the United Kingdom, the Department of Health initially announced that around 65,000 deaths were to be expected. In the meantime, by the start of 2010, this estimate was downgraded to only 1,000 fatalities. By January 2010, fewer than 5,000 persons had been registered as having caught the disease and about 360 deaths had been noted,” says his report.
The public health minister, Gillian Merron, told Flynn in a meeting for the report that a Cabinet Office investigation was looking into Britain’s handling of the outbreak and would report some time after June.
Countries across Europe reacted very differently to the pandemic, says the report. Not all mounted high-profile vaccination campaigns, as did the UK.
Flynn’s draft accuses the WHO of a lack of transparency. Some members of its advisory groups are flu experts who have also received funding, especially for research projects, from pharmaceutical companies making drugs and vaccines against flu.
“The neutrality of their advice could be contested,” says the report.
“To date, WHO has failed to provide convincing evidence to counter these allegations and the organisation has not published the relevant declarations of interest. Taking such a reserved position, the organisation has joined other bodies, such as the European Medicines Agency, which likewise, have still not published such documents.”
Via the Sydney Morning Herald: Authorities warn of double flu threat. Excerpt:
Health authorities are warning of a double whammy flu threat this year, with both the swine flu and more conventional strains in wide circulation.
Dr Alan Hampson, chair of the Influenza Specialist Group and consultant to the World Health Organisation, said new cases of swine flu were now emerging in Australia after a lull over summer.
Over the second half of last year, the (H1N1) swine flu was most serious in those aged under 65, along with pregnant women and the chronically ill.
Dr Hampson said Australia was “highly unlikely” to avoid a return of widespread swine flu infection this winter. And it was likely to be joined by another flu strain.
“We don’t expect the flu season to be only swine influenza this year,” Dr Hampson told reporters in Sydney on Monday.
“There is a ‘A:Perth’ strain out there … that has its greatest impact in older people.
“Swine flu, as you’ve seen last year, has its greatest impact on young people.
“We may well have a season where we’ve got two viruses affecting largely different groups of the population.”
I admit it: The Onion, the only remaining credible American news source, has once again nailed Flublogia to the wall: KFC Introduces New Bird-Flu Dipping Vaccine.
Back in 2007, The Onion announced the arrival of bird flu vaccine, and in 2005 it warned of an impending worldwide flandemic. That same issue alerted us to President George W. Bush’s order to slaughter bald eagles to prevent an H5N1 pandemic.
And as early as February 2, 2005, before I even started blogging the flu, The Onion noted that Nation’s leading alarmists excited about bird flu.
(Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:27:33 -0500)
I’m an epidemiologist, not an immunologist or a virologist but I like reading immunology and virology. It’s interesting, in some ways for me it’s more interesting than reading epidemiology. In an epidemiological paper I can see pretty quickly where things are going (or going wrong) and there isn’t much mystery. But the sheer number of moving parts in a cellular system is amazing and confounding. Navigating through the myriad bits and pieces that appear every week in the scientific literature is tough for experts and even tougher for the rest of us who aren’t experts. Vincent Racaniello over at Virology Blog is a great source of information and I read him in an effort not to fall too far behind and help me understand new papers as they come out. One appeared the other day in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS; hat tip reader hjmler) that was billed in the LA Times as showing that a bit of duck DNA protects that animal from the lethal effects of the flu virus. Well, maybe. There was the ever-present qualifier “might” that seems to appear in many “news” articles based on press releases. To me it’s a signal that a reporter or university media flack is trying to get a scientist to say more than they would to other scientists, and that’s the case here — “Bit of duck DNA might protect poultry from flu, scientists say”:
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