Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Mexico Ends H1N1 Alert After 14 Months

Here’s about H1N1.

The Mexican administration has declared the end of the health alert for the deadly virus A/H1N1 after 14 months in which 1,289 people lost the lives in this country and 72,000 cases were recorded.

Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos announced this at a press meet on Tuesday.

The decision was taken unanimously by the General Health Council after monitoring the progression of the outbreak that caused its last casualty during the last month (May 2010) and in agreement with WHO and the Pan American Health Organization.

Whilst there were 216 people hospitalized in October last year, by June 25 there were just 22.

"The ciruculation of the virus is minimal," Villalobos said.

Nonetheless, the country is not lowering its guard and still has some 875,000 doses of anti-influenza A (H1N1) vaccine on hand. (With Inputs from Agencies)

Saturday, June 26, 2010

H1N1 Positive Cases

Four more positive H1N1.

Four relatives of the 27-year-old woman from Mahbubnagar who succumbed to swine flu on Thursday, tested positive on Friday.
The four have not been admitted to the hospital but have been home quarantined. All four had been in contact with the woman before she passed away. These four cases are among the 14 who are currently under observation for showing symptoms of the virus.
State health officials said that people with swine flu symptoms should report to notified health facilities at the earliest.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Woman Succumbs With H1N1

Above some info about it.

Woman succumbs to H1N1 virus

BS Reporter / Chennai/ Hyderabad June 25, 2010, 0:28 IST

A 27-year woman succumbed to H1N1 virus on Thursday. The woman, a native of Mahbubnagar district, was referred to Hyderabad by Sri Venkateshwara Medical College in the district. She was admitted to a corporate hospital in Malakpet on June 21 and samples were sent for testing on June 22.

The tests turned positive. The hospital authorities asked the family members to shift the woman to Gandhi Hospital, where she succumbed. This is the second death from swine flu in Hyderabad and third in the state this season.

Vaccine H1N1 offered

Above about free H1N1 vaccine offered in Johnson County.

The Johnson County Health Department is still offering free H1N1 vaccine, it announced Thursday.

People are still contracting the flu, though in much smaller numbers, and officials are recommending that people get vaccinated.

Johnson County has enough vaccine to last until about September, officials said, when a new seasonal flu vaccine will come out that includes protection against the H1N1 strain.

Of 309 million residents in the United States, officials said, about 60 million were infected with H1N1 in the past year and 75 million got the vaccine.

That leaves more than half of citizens still vulnerable, they said.

The vaccines are offered without appointments to all who want them, officials said. They can get them at the clinic in Olathe at 11875 S. Sunset Drive or the one in Mission at 6000 Lamar Ave.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/24/2041454/free-h1n1-vaccinations-offered.html#ixzz0rrHyEHpW

Friday, June 18, 2010

An update on H1N1

These about H1N1.

The number of GP consultations for influenza-like illness appears stable after increasing over the past three weeks. Many general practices are seeing more young children who are unwell. There is certainly evidence of winter illnesses in the community and the predominant influenza virus is likely to be the pandemic strain. 
Healthline, New Zealand's free health 24 hour health advice line has seen a slight increase in the number of calls regarding people with influenza-like illnesses. Over the past week just over 17% of all calls to Healthline were people calling with influenza-like illnesses.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

H1N1 Vaccination coming in the fall

These are info about H1N1 vaccination.

We're a few months away from Flu season, but the Centers for Disease Control continues to prepare for Influenza and the H1N1 virus.

In La Crosse County, there is still potential for another wave of H1N1 to hit our community.  However, testing in La Crosse County and throughout the country shows there's been a longer period of time between outbreaks which means the spread of the virus is slowing.

To continue in this direction, the La Crosse County Health Department is still recommending people get their vaccination.  And there's good news, there will be a change to the vaccine this fall.  La Crosse Co. Health Director Doug Mormann says, "my understanding at the moment is we'll be looking at one influenza vaccine this fall rather than the two vaccines that we had last fall."

The CDC and vaccine manufacturers are still working out the exact details for this fall's influenza vaccination.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Kerala: H1N1 takes on 16 lives

Above about H1N1 in Kerala.

New Delhi, June 15th: The Union Government today decided to send a three-member team to Kerala as a fresh outbreak of influenza A (H1N1) in two districts of the state has caused at least 16 deaths in the past one month.

An official press release said the the pandemic had started showing an increasing trend with the onset of the monsoon in Kerala. It said the outbreak was confined to Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts of south Kerala.

In all, there had been 201 laboratory-confirmed cases of the flu and 16 deaths, the release said. Nine of those who died were pregnant women.

The central team, that is expected to leave here tomorrow, will consist of Dr Sunil Gupta, Joint Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Delhi, Dr Pradeep Khasnobis, Epidemiologist, NCDC, and Dr B V Tandale, Scientist, National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.

The release said the State Government had sought support in terms of drugs, vaccines and personal protective equipment (PPE) and these were being sent to the state immediately. The items include oseltamivir capsules, oseltamivir suspension, vaccines and masks.

The release said Kerala had earlier received 45,000 doses of vaccine. The utilisation for healthcare workers is about 92 per cent, it said.

According to the release, the state government had sought one lakh doses of vaccine to vaccinate pregnant women. It said the bridging study of Sanofi Pasteur or the clinical trials conducted by Zydus Cadila did not include pregnant women.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Kerala largely hit by swine flu

Above about Kerala was hit by swine flu.

Monsoon this year did bring more of bad news than good, especially for people of Kerala where swine flu is set to widen its grip with each passing day. The state is worst hit due to the H1N1 influenza that spreads the highly contagious respiratory disease. The cases tested positive for the H1N1 virus are reported from the districts of Kottayam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kannur, Alappuzha, Erunakulam, Malappuram and Thrissur. The number of swine flu positive cases in one month has been increased by 40 by June 14 of this year. However the total number of deaths due to the deadly flu is reported to be more than 45 since its outbreak in the state last year in August.
Apart from swine flu cases, the state has also

reported other types of fever including dengue fever, rat fever and Chikunguniya. The spread of other types of viral fever has become a reason to worry for the health officials as the number of people reporting to various government and private hospitals has swollen to 9,700. The onset of monsoon has definitely triggered the number of fresh cases of swine flu in Kerala and its neighboring Tamilnadu in the last two days. The government has alerted the health authorities to take adequate preventive measures and be prepared.
With the report of 11 new swine flu cases from the neighboring Kerala, the government seems more concerned. The Health Secretary Mr. V K Subburaj informed that the increasing number of swine flu cases in Kerala and Tamilnadu is due to the arrival of monsoon in two states. Meanwhile the Kerala government has also asked Centre to send a team of experts to study the epidomology study of swine flu. It has also asked the centre to urgently send more H1N1 preventive medicines to the state.

Monday, June 14, 2010

One Year Later

Here’s info about H1N1.

A year ago, swine flu was a major issue. Now the attention to the so-called H1N1 virus has died down, but state health officials say the threat is still there.

It was last April that swine flu cases first started appearing.

“It’s been one heck of a year.”

California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Mark Horton says the state’s been through two waves of the illness. About nine-thousand Californians have been hospitalized with H1N1 and nearly 600 have died from the virus. Horton says though the pandemic has receded for now, H1N1 is still out there:

"When we’ve looked back historically what has happened with similar pandemics in the past there have been in many cases third and fourth waves.”

Horton says if that does happen, the state still has a network of doctors set up to alert health officials:

The surveillance mechanisms are still in place to allow us to at the earliest possible sign to detect any re-increase of influenza activity in the community and we’ll be ramping that up again as we move closer to the fall.”

Sunday, June 13, 2010

H1N1 (Swine Flu)

Here’s about H1N1 nowadays.

The head of the WHO said Tuesday that her decisions about swine flu were not influenced by advisers’ links to pharmaceutical companies, which were pointed out in a critical journal article this month.

Three scientists out of 22 who worked on the guidelines were named as having received some money from pharmaceuticals. The scientists did not work at the drug companies, but were paid for things like speaking at meetings sponsored by them.

The guidelines recommend, among other things, that countries consider buying antivirals and vaccines to combat a pandemic. The authors of the BMJ article suggest, without providing direct evidence, that these scientists’ ties to pharmaceutical companies influenced WHO’s recommendation that countries buy drugs and vaccines — adding to those drug companies’ profits. “Our investigation has revealed damaging issues,” wrote Deborah Cohen of BMJ and journalist Philip Carter. “These conflicts of interest have never been disclosed by WHO.

WHO’s handling of the outbreak is being reviewed by a 29-member expert panel that will report its findings next year. Critics say many of those panelists are also trusted WHO advisers and government employees who could end up whitewashing any failures. “At no time, not for one second, did commercial interests enter my decision-making,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said.

Chan insisted she was open to the panel’s criticism. “Should this committee decide that the current definition of a pandemic and the phases leading up to its declaration need to be tightened or otherwise revised, this will be another recommendation that we will welcome, and act on.”

The U.S. Health and Human Services department defended the U.N. body. “WHO handled the outbreak in a very measured and appropriate manner,” said Bill Hall, an HHS spokesman. “Their decisions were driven by the existing and evolving conditions at the time.” He said there was “no indication whatsoever that any of their decisions were influenced by industry.” Other leading officials agreed.

“There was nothing in those guidelines that was not based on the best science available,” said Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota who has advised the U.S. on pandemic preparations. He said the scientists consulted were the world’s top flu experts and to not include them would have been a major flaw. Osterholm said that because flu viruses are unpredictable, it was impossible for anyone to predict last spring that swine flu would not evolve into a more lethal strain.

He slammed the BMJ article, calling it “irresponsible and reckless,” and said its authors had not substantiated their claims WHO behaved inappropriately during the pandemic. “It’s akin to shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre without regard to the consequences,” Osterholm said. He said while WHO should be subjected to the highest scrutiny, BMJ’s accusations had done “untold damage to the public health infrastructure of the world.”

Harvey Fineberg, the president of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, said the review panel which he heads will hear from critics of WHO when it next meets from June 30 to July 2. A report published by the Council of Europe last week said the guidelines from WHO, European Union agencies and national governments led to a “waste of large sums of public money and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.” The agency is not an EU body.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Dangerous or exaggerated?

Above about H1N1.

When H1N1 broke out in Mexico, many reports of death and widespread illness were made. While it is true that many people died or became very ill in countries like Mexico, this is mostly because of a lack of treatment opportunities. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization, or WHO, has blown it out of proportion and made US citizens think it was fatal no matter where you lived. I do think that H1N1's reputation was amplified when people got word of it and panicked. Many schools were actually shut down because of just a couple of cases, and clinics were created just to test for symptoms.


There were fewer deaths from Swine Flu than from the normal influenza, and less than 1% of patients are currently being hospitalized. H1N1 is expected to come back during the normal time when flu comes, and seems like it will be around for a while. However, unless if it mutates into something worse, there is nothing to be afraid of.

H1N1 pandemic slowing

Here about H1N1.

In a statement published on its website, said the World Health Organization's Emergency Committee Tuesday that the worst outbreak of H1N1 influenza pandemic, which spread rapidly last summer seems to have passed, call if not to the point wiped away.

Tropical areas such as the Caribbean and Southeast Asia remain the most active regions where pandemic influenza virus is being spread, though, according to the WHO release, they are experiencing only a "low-level resurgence of cases after experiencing more intense activity during July 2009."
The release states that, "After extensive discussions and questions, the Committee expressed the unanimous view that from a global perspective while pandemic activity is continuing, the period of most intense pandemic activity appears likely to have passed for many parts of the world."
Despite the ebbing of the disease, the WHO warns, countries should remain vigilant in taking public health precautions to prevent the spread of the pandemic, such as continued vaccination and surveillance of the disease, the release stated.
Pandemic disease is likely to continue to happen, and the Emergency Committee will gather once more in July to discuss information about the winter influenza season in the Southern Hemisphere.

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