WHO attend key European hearing on flu pandemic

EPIDEMICS

Swine flu toll reaches 14,142: WHO
Geneva (AFP) Jan 22, 2010 - The death toll from the swine flu pandemic has risen to at least 14,142, up 588 from a week ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. Announcing its latest data on the dpread of A(H1N1) virus, the UN health body said North Africa, South Asia and limited areas of Eastern Europe were now seeing the most intense transmission of the virus. The pandemic in the northern hemisphere peaked between late October and late November, WHO said. Since the virus first appeared in Mexico last year, the Americas have recorded the greatest number of fatalities, with at least 7,094 deaths. At least 3,099 have died in Europe and at least 2,877 in the east Asia and Pacific region, WHO said.

France talks tough with drug firms on flu vaccines
Paris (AFP) Jan 22, 2010 - France is in "tough" talks with drug companies to cancel orders for millions of swine flu vaccines and insists on scratching the deals instead of renegotiating them, its health minister said on Friday. France earlier this month moved to cancel purchases of 50 million swine flu vaccines after ordering far more than needed, but was confident at the time that it would not have to compensate the big companies that provide them. But the negotiations with the British drug firm GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi of France and Novartis of Switzerland are "extraordinarily tough," the minister, Roselyne Bachelot, told Europe 1 radio station on Friday.

"There is no question of transforming the cancellation of the orders into future orders," she added, despite reports that the government might sweeten the cancellation deal by committing to purchases for future epidemics. France spent 869 million euros (1.25 billion dollars) on 94 million vaccines for the A(H1N1) virus, but like some other European countries it has witnessed less demand than expected. It had also planned for two doses of the vaccine per person, but medical authorities have since said a single dose was sufficient.

by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) Jan 22, 2010
The World Health Organisation's leading flu expert will join a Council of Europe hearing next week to scrutinise if they had overreacted to the swine flu pandemic, an official said Friday.

"There will be a WHO delegation going to Strasbourg to this open hearing on Tuesday," said spokesman Gregory Haertl, adding that it would be led by Keiji Fukuda, WHO Special Adviser on Pandemic Influenza.

The France-based Council of Europe announced on its website Thursday that the hearing entitled "The handling of the H1N1 pandemic: more transparency needed?" would be held in public.

The Health Family and Social affairs commission of the Council's assembly invited the WHO and pharmaceutical firms after a political storm erupted over the alarm caused by the declaration of a pandemic with A(H1N1) influenza.

Council of Europe parliamentarian Wolfgang Wodarg has accused national and international authorities of declaring a "false pandemic", claiming pressure from pharmaceutical firms anxious to profit from vaccine and drug sales.

The WHO responded a week ago by announcing a likely independent review of its response to swine flu, but only once the pandemic is over.

Haertl defended the UN health agency's response after the emergence of the new flu virus with fast spreading illness, and deaths, in the United States and Mexico in April 2008.

"The question is not really whether we had contact with the industry but whether we had any undue influence exerted upon us by commercial interests -- and the answer is no," he told journalists on Friday.

He insisted that the WHO had maintained that the symptoms of the disease were largely mild in a "sober and balanced" assessment of the worldwide spread of swine flu into more than 200 countries.

French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot on Friday described talks with drug companies to cancel orders for millions of swine flu vaccines as "tough".

France spent 869 million euros (1.25 billion dollars) on 94 million vaccines for the A(H1N1) virus, but like some other European countries it has witnessed less demand than expected.

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