Swine flu pandemic now 'unstoppable': WHO official

EPIDEMICS

Three more swine flu deaths bring Thai toll to 21
Thailand confirmed three more swine flu fatalities on Monday, bringing the country's death toll from the virus to 21. Two females and a male were the latest victims of the A(H1N1) virus, while 328 new cases were confirmed, bringing the total number of infections to 3,883 across the kingdom, a public health ministry statement said. The ministry will ask the cabinet to approve a 70-million-baht (2.1-million-dollar) budget Tuesday to raise awareness about swine flu, Deputy Prime Minister Sanan Kachonprasart said. A vaccine plant was opened south of Bangkok Sunday, which is expected to produce two million doses of swine flu vaccinations by January.

Brazil records third swine flu death
Brazil has now three confirmed fatalities from swine flu following the death of a nine-year-old boy last week, health authorities said Monday. The boy died July 5 in a hospital in the southern city of Porto Alegre. It was believed he contracted the illness from a family that had visited Argentina, where the flu is rampant, a regional health official told AFP. The other two fatalities occurred in late June: those of an 11-year-old girl in Sao Paulo and a man in the southern city of Rio Grande do Sul. More than 1,000 other people in Brazil have been infected with the disease. Most have recovered. The Brazilian health ministry has advised the young, the old and people with lowered immunity to avoid travel to countries heavily affected by the flu, principally Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico and the United States.

Baby son of Spanish swine flu victim dies: hospital
A medical blunder on Monday led to the death of a baby born prematurely to a Moroccan woman, who in June became the first victim of swine flu in Spain, said a senior hospital official. Medical staff had made the "terrible medical mistake" of feeding the infant intravenously said the director of Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital, Antonio Barba. Premature babies need to be fed with a tube inserted through the nose. "The hospital assumes all responsibility," he told reporters, adding the baby boy had not been infected with the A(H1N1) virus. The infant was delivered June 29 at the hospital via Cesarean section as his 28-week-pregnant mother's condition worsened. She died the following day. The woman's family said at the time that they planned to sue the hospital for having initially failed to diagnose her disease. A 41-year-old man became the the second person to die in Spain from the virus on Thursday at a hospital in the Canary Islands.

Philippines reports two new swine flu deaths
Two men have died of swine flu in the Philippines, taking the country's total number of deaths to three, the government said Monday. A 74-year-old man battling several diseases and a 19-year-old man with asthma died last week, chief health department epidemiologist Eric Tayag told reporters. Yolanda Oliveros, head of the ministry's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, earlier told reporters the second fatality was a seven year-old girl with an asthma problem, but Tayag later said she had announced the wrong gender and age. Tayag gave no explanation for the mistake. The older patient had battled pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, acute kidney failure and emphysema, both Oliveros and Tayag said. Last month, a 50-year-old female employee of the House of Representatives became the first known patient to die from the A(H1N1) virus in the Philippines. Oliveros put the number of swine flu cases in the country at 2,668, with just five percent still being treated and the rest, discounting the three deaths, fully recovered.

by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) July 13, 2009
The swine flu pandemic has grown "unstoppable" and all nations will need access to vaccines, a WHO official said Monday, as seven new deaths were reported and a study raised fresh concerns.

Britain, Thailand and the Philippines all reported deaths on Monday, while Saudi Arabia shut an international school after 20 students were diagnosed with the A(H1N1) virus.

As the death toll increased, the World Health Organisation official said a swine flu vaccine should be available as early as September and all countries would need to be able to protect themselves.

A group of vaccination experts concluded after a recent meeting that "the H1N1 pandemic is unstoppable and therefore all countries would need to have access to vaccines," said Marie-Paul Kieny, WHO director on vaccine research.

Health workers should be at the top of the list for vaccination since they will be in high demand as people continue to fall sick, she added.

Countries would be free to decide on their national priorities, but other groups should include pregnant women and anyone over six months old who has chronic health problems, the WHO official said.

Particular attention would have to be paid to children since they are considered "amplifiers" of the spread of the virus, especially when gathered in schools, Kieny added.

More than 90,000 swine flu cases have been reported worldwide, including 429 deaths, the most recent WHO numbers from last week show.

While most cases have been considered mild, a study released on Monday said the virus causes more lung damage than ordinary seasonal flu strains but still responds to antiviral drugs.

Virologists tested samples of the virus taken from patients in the United States as well as several seasonal flu viruses on mice, ferrets, macaque monkeys and specially-bred miniature pigs.

They found that A(H1N1) caused more severe lung lesions among mice, ferrets and macaques than the seasonal flu viruses.

But it did not cause any symptoms among the mini-pigs, which could explain why there has been no evidence that pigs in Mexico fell sick with the disease before the outbreak began among humans.

The team also found that the virus was highly sensitive to two approved and two experimental antiviral drugs, including Tamiflu, now being hurriedly stockpiled around the world.

This confirms the drugs' role as a "first line of defence" against the flu pandemic, they said.

The worry about the present strain of A(H1N1) is that it could pick up genes from other flu strains that would enable it to be both highly virulent and contagious, and these warnings are spelt out in the new study.

"Sustained person-to-person transmission might result in the emergence of more pathogenic variants, as observed in the 1918 pandemic virus," it says.

Another concern is that the virus could acquire mutations enabling it to be resistant to Tamiflu.

"Collectively, our findings are a reminder that (strains of swine flu) have not yet garnered a place in history, but may still do so."

Most of the deaths reported on Monday were in Asia, with Thailand reporting three fatalities and the Philippines two.

Thailand's death toll has now reached 21, while the Philippines has three deaths.

Authorities in Britain announced the deaths of a six-year-old girl and a doctor who had contracted swine flu, bringing the number of fatalities there linked to the virus to 17.

Senior British health official Simon Tanner described her death as "sad" and added: "It will probably not be the last that we have in this pandemic."

Nearly 10,000 Britons have been confirmed with swine flu but hundreds of thousands more are thought to have it.

Elsewhere in Europe, Italy's health ministry reported 38 new cases over the course of the last four days, taking its total well over the 200 mark.

The school closure in Riyadh came with officials there especially concerned over swine flu with upwards of two million people expected over the next five months on pilgrimages to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

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EPIDEMICS

First British swine flu death without other issues: official
London (AFP) July 10, 2009
A patient at a hospital in southeast England has become the first person in Britain without underlying health problems to die from swine flu, officials said Friday. The patient died at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospital in Essex, health authorities said, adding the individual's family had requested that no further details be released. "The patient had no underlying health ... read more

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